#and gabriel didn't learn a fucking thing from it

[rollforjackass]

gabriel being able to just fuck off with beelzebub bc neither of them actually gave a shit about the world beyond their own self-interests makes complete and total sense as to why ineffable bureaucracy became So canon So quickly, but fuck does it make me even angrier that they got that happy ending while aziraphale and crowley were left in shambles. motherfucking gabriel and beelzebub are two of the REASONS that aziraphale and crowley CAN'T FUCKING COMMUNICATE and they just swan off into the sunset???? they tried to KILL them last season, then aziraphale & crowley spent this entire season helping them survive to get back to each other, and neither gabriel nor beelzebub acknowledged it in a meaningful, more-than-one-off way?????? hand me a brick i will take care of this myself

[tarjapearce]

Grandma's Visit.

Warnings: Drama, mild angst, Strained Relationships. Comfort towards the end. No proofread

Summary: Conchata wants to meet Benji.

A/N: There might not be updates, but have this little piece as an offer :')

Hey

Gabriel's leg bounced as the main door was closed, a bit of a slam on it. His hands immediately fetched his phone.

Migue

Busy right now.

Drop that shit and listen

?? ¿Qué pasó?  (What's wrong?)

Mamá va para allá, cabrón.

The fuck you mean she's on her way? Did you tell her where do I live?

Miguel, it's mom we're talking about.

The eldest O'Hara sighed and raked a hand over his hair. He was definitely not prepared for what laid ahead.

She wants to meet Benjamin.

Miguel's body tensed as his muscles flexed so tightly, one would think he'd break. And it wasn't far from the truth.

Conchata. Or Connie for her friends, was the ever annoying stone on his shoes. Miguel had refused to have her in his wedding. Not out of spite, rather for the  notion he had of his beloved progenitor. He knew that trouble followed her everywhere and if it wasn't following her like an overly attached stalker, is cause she was the problem itself.

Conchata was anything but easy to be around. And things had gone even more acrid after the wedding. Miguel never told you about the fourty five minute call she made him just to say how much of a bad son he was for not inviting her over.

But Miguel knew better, if he'd had her, she'd either complain about everything, ruining the mood for everyone. Or she'd start making snide comments on you and he'd get pissed, some drama would ensue causing an even bigger and jagged rift between them and his wedding would be ruined.

"Hey"

Your gentle and soft touch grounded him, anchored his mind back to his body, as his attention snapped back at you.

"You ok?"

His eyes felt tired and heavy. Unable to meet your gaze completely.

"I'll be."

You cradled him in your arms and kissed the top of his forehead. The touch alone melted him. His own arms embracing your shorter form, that somehow did the perfect work of comforting him and ease his thoughts. But when it came to his mother, little good things came out from it.

"My... eh-" He cleared his throat, "My mother is coming for a visit"

Oh...

"What she could possibly want after so many years?"

"Meet Benjamin."

Even though his words seemed simple, the clenching of his fists until his knuckles turned white, only dictated it was far from being that. Miguel didn't fear his mother, but feared and hated the words that could possibly escape her mouth when things weren't her way.

His wellbeing would be the sacrifice for the visit, cause he'd do anything possible to avoid you or his children get hurt.

"I swear, if she says or does something stupid-"

"Mi reina, let me handle her, ok?"

Your lips pursed and your brows deepened in a soft furrow.

"I won't hesitate-"

"I know. But please. Just, let me, ok?"

Both of you knew that things weren't going to be easy, his distress was obvious, he knew you'd step in if necessary, but he had to face her, it was more like a closure for him than anything. His baby boy wouldn't suffer the dooming and cursing words she gave him so many years ago. Words he learned to loathe as he grew up.

"Alright."

----

Maybe Gabriel's heads up was a false alarm, because nearly a week had gone by. A week of pent up stress and anxiety from both sides. And you could tell from Miguel's demeanor changing.

Even though being loving and a great father remained on the top list, you knew better than that. He'd been found asleep in his office after dinner, or would shut out himself for some little minutes. You'd give him space, and when he needed you, he'd always know where to find you.

He didn't even required to say 'I need you' cause you knew. His body language over the years had been a great subject of study, specially when it came to anxiety and other negatives that always switched on whenever his mother popped up in a conversation, or when something didn't sit right in his gut.

He'd pace, pick at the skin around his nails hard enough to draw blood, chew at the insides of his cheek, drink alot of more coffee to keep himself awake, grumpier than usual, irritated, short replies for everything outside his beloved family.

With you he'd be clingier than usual, he'd spoil Gabi over to avoid thinking too much. He'd pour himself into being that amazing and loving parent he never had, but at night, he'd just hold you until he fell asleep. He'd clutch onto you so tightly that sometimes you'd have little bruises, barely visible ones, in the places he'd hold.

Your comfort skills poured into his preferred love language. Physical touch. You'd play with his hair until he fell asleep, a little purr coming from him before giving into sleep, you'd caress his back in soothing circles, letting the steady beating of your heart lull him to calm.

You'd kiss his face, showering him in affection, as if with every kiss a bit of his worries would go away.

The knock on the main door however interrupted his train of thoughts. You had gone to the supermarket to get some stuff you had forgotten for dinner. Relief washing over him as you now we're home, or so he innocently had thought. All air was caught in his throat upon seeing none other than Conchata on the front door.

Even for her age, Conchata had some beauty reserved. Her skin tone same as Miguel's, soft curls that lingered above her shoulders, deep brown eyes that if one looked close enough, would see the deep red in them. Tall and seizing him with a look he also learned to master.

A scowl disguised as a smile.

"Miguel. "

"Mamá."

A too common and long pleasantries shared between the both.

She hasn't aged much.

Miguel's mind chanted.

"You're gonna let me in to meet my grandson, or what?"

A bushy brow of his quirked, blasé and bored, but he stepped aside. His whole frame had curbed her for long enough.

Here we go

Her scrutinizing gaze was unstoppable against the nakedness of his home. Her eyes raked in every little detail out of place, loading her verbal ammo with it.

"Where is the baby?"

"Asleep."

Monotone and monosyllabic answers that matched his expression was all she could pry from him. It was ridiculous the amount of pictures you seemed to have about Gabriella. She saw her when she was two, then six. Staying in Miguel’s life wasn't something she actually liked to partake on. Too busy with her own demons and new boyfriends to care.

Why would she? He was already a grown ass man.

A man that refused to have her at his own wedding. A past resentment that has lasted over the years and her own mind had been feeding the fester inside her heart. It didn't help you had one of the wedding pictures scattered around the living room.

The few proofs she  needed to see, to know she wasn't welcome, but knowing her son had his own now, was another excuse to see what kind of man and father Miguel had turned out to be.

His arms crossed on his chest as she sat down in one of the seats in the couch.

"Come."

"I'm fine here, thanks."

"I'm trying to be civil. The least you can do is obey your mother for once."

"Why you came?"

"I told you. I need to see my grandson."

"Whatever for?"

Her eyes hardened at his words, but a sigh escaped her lips.

"God, you're so like your father. Always mistrusting people."

"You need to leave."

Hearing her say such curse, made his heart beat even faster. Hands clenched tightly at his sides. Eyes away from her, like if the mere sight of her brought back so many unpleasantness he had fought hard to work them through.

"I won't leave until your... woman shows up and throws me away."

"She will."

"Of course she will. You're not man enough. Just look at this place. A mess."

"And?"

Miguel knew that paying and baiting into her games, would only hinder so. many years of progress he had done on his own. But would also mean to give her the attention she desperately seeked, even if it meant to do it the wrong way.

"What do you mean, and?! What does she does around all day?" Conchata huffed, " In my times the wife was the one that kept everything in check. I've seen nothing but a mess so far."

"Sorry for that."

Your tired and irked voice echoed from the kitchen's door. Miguel gave you a little smirk.

"Have been busy being a real mother this whole time. Miguel, mi amor can you defrost some vegetables, please?"

"Sure do. Found everything?"

You both were purposely ignoring her. A silent yet powerful statement.

You have no power here.

Conchata's eyes set like stone into you. How dared a tiny flea like yourself to speak to her in such way?. And even worse, how could his son be lenient in allowing you to be disrespectful towards her?

You had entered quietly, the heavy and draining aura could be felt even from outside. You had told Gabi to wait outside and rearrange the groceries in the meantime.

" Oh, I didn't know you had returned."

Your name rolling off her tongue felt wrong.

" It's my house too."

"Ah, of course. You didn't do a pre-nup. Te va a dejar en la calle, Miguel." (She'll leave you bare)

Conchata's gaze never left you, it only turned even more intense as her pupils followed you every step.

"I came here to meet my grandson. Where is Gabriella? "

Said precious child helped you to get the bags from your car, while Conchata opened her arms for Gabi to cuddle her. But everything that came out was her hiding behind you, while looking between you and her, as if asking permission.

"Do you want to greet grandma, baby?"

Gabi only recoiled back, hiding further from you.

"Guess not."

You shrugged and instructed Gabi to go to her room, your eldest baby ignored her grandma.

"Muy chistosa tu mujer, enseñándole a mis nietos a irrespetarme ." (Your woman is so funny by teaching my grandkids to disrespect me.)

Miguel had to roll his eyes and stare at her boringly as he pulled out the vegetables and put them to thaw while you clenched your jaw by the sudden resented babbling that came from your mother in law.

"Where is Benjamin? I came here to see him. And I'm sure you'd love to have me here again."

"He'll be up in a minute. Would you like a a glass of water?"

Miguel offered but Conchata was already set in making you as uncomfortable as possible. And when Benjamin was brought in, rubbing his sleepy and baby face, looking for you, Conchata stood and took Benji from Miguel's arms. Holding him with such disingenuous affection it made Benji to reach for Miguel instantly.

You tensed, and so did Benjamin as Conchata admired him. If it wasn't for the skin tone matching Miguel’s, one would think that Benjamin wasn't his. Benjamin had your curls. And not Miguel's soft waves. Benjamin was the splitting image of you with a bit of Miguel's DNA painted in a few selected places. Like his eyes and height.

"I'm actually surprised you managed to pop out his children. Miguel is... big. Got it from his father."

"Didn't care much about that, ma'am."

"No se parece en nada a ti, Miguel. ¿Estás seguro que es tu hijo?" (He doesn't look like you. Are you sure he's your son?)

You didn't know what infuriated you more. The fact that she hinted that Benjamin wasn't his, a shallow and not so subtle hint at Miguel's past, or the pleased smirk her mouth turned into after spilling out the venom and seeing Miguel's discomfit grow.

Some people couldn't be helped. And Conchata truly couldn't help but love hurting her son. But you weren't having it. Not when Miguel's eyes turned away from her, not in hurt but in such anger that even you knew things wouldn't end up good for neither. And still, he regarded her with uninterested eyes.

His lack of engagement at her taunts, made her even more lashing. Like a little child that refused to have her whims met.

Even worse when Benjamin started to fuss and reach for him with a nervous cry. Even he felt odd and icky around her. You took Benjamin from her, cooing and soothing him, but he wanted Miguel. Who gladly took his precious baby, away from Connie. Inspecting him for any damage to finally kiss the top of his forehead, reassuringly.

You're safe.

"Si ya terminó de incomodarnos, creo que se puede ir, señora." (If you're done making us uncomfortable, you may go, ma'am.)

Her eyes widened at your spanish. It was clear that you had understood everything she had said, but were wise enough to not lose your temper, yet you fought back.

"Remind me to never visit you again, please."

"As if you ever do that. And no, it's not an invitation."

"Escúchame bien, chamaco ingrato-" (Listen to me you ungrateful brat)

"Ma'am."

You weren't one for yelling, but your voice was firm enough to have three pair of eyes set on you, Benjamin's fussing stopped. Conchata's lips turned into a scowl at your words.

"Thanks for your visit."

"You know, you could've settled for something better-"

"Así estoy bien, gracias. Now, if you excuse us, We've got dinner to make. The door is right there." (Im just fine. Thanks)

She left with a slam that had Benjamin cry out of the jumpscare.

Miguel hushed and rubbed his baby's back in little circles to keep him calm before giving his pacifier.

" You ok? "

Your hand squeezed Miguel's for a moment while he kissed your temple gratefully.

" Yeah. She's gone. That's why exactly I didn't invite her to the wedding or meeting you."

"It's alright. God... she's-"

"Annoying. I know. Sorry you had to hear all that."

"Nah. I'm glad you taught me cause, damn... Her face upon hearing me speaking it, was priceless. And just for you to know, I was about to explain how we almost made Benji on the car."

Miguel snorted and nodded, knowing you would. You had each other's back and that wasn't up for discussion.

" Te amo."

You mumbled in his ear before stealing a kiss from his lips.

" También te amo."

[brendaareiss]

CAL AND ANDRE HEADCANONS! Finally! I feel like there's some I have already said b4, but idk. Enjoy!

⚠️Triggers⚠️: SA, SH

- Andre furrowed his brows when he was concentrated, Cal poked his tongue out

- Andre was actually a great student. That's why most of the people didn't like him either, whether being because of envy or because they saw him as a nerd and annoying. But bro had +A on everything

- Cal on the other hand, was pathetic at studies. His best ever grade was a C

- They didn't actually hold hands most of the time, just intertwine pinkies unconsciously

-Cal always followed andre everywhere. It was not even a conscious act.

- They both talked shit abt their siblings

- Andre=bpd + psicopathy

- Cal= adhd + depression (duh).

- Andre paid attention on the smallest details and had rlly good memory. Like, something stupid Cal said years ago, andre remembered it like it was yesterday. Or he knew what things Cal liked or not, even if Cal hasn't told him, he knew it because he paid attention to what Cal was doing

- Cal was a chronic nail biter. Rachel tried putting nail polish on him to make it better, because Cal reached the point where his whole finger was covered in blood

-Cal has had many addictions in his life. It was all because his depression, he couldn't get happiness (dopamine) in anything in his life so he tried to get it somewhere else. That's why he started doing weed at a young age, well, until the possession charge. After that, he went straight to cutting. It wasn't as good as to get high, but at least it worked and wasn't illegal. He used to get blackout drunk too, trying to get dopamine from where he could.

- U can't tell me they didn't explore each other's bodies. Ofc they did (I like to think they would refer to that as "favors"), but they never rlly knew what the fuck they were. Were they boyfriends? Were they just friends with benefits? That's actually where the term "the army of two" appeared, trying to give what they had a tag or a "name". But they knew rlly well they weren't just friends. They knew each other too much, they were too similar and too connected to be just friends.

- Cal was sa'd from when he was 7 years old until he was 14 by his cousin, who was 8 years older than him. He never told anything to anyone, not even Andre, but he eventually figured it out. He was paranoid and very protective with his siblings (even though he didn't like them, it doesn't mean that they weren't siblings, Cal cared for them a lot), making sure his cousin NEVER approached them. And if someone older talked to them he would get rlly anxious and freaked out.

- Andre always cared too much about Cal. He knew the state of Cal's mental health and physical health (anemic ass) so he always was there for him. And I like to think not only andre, but his family too. Feeding him until Cal couldn't physically bring the fork to his mouth (I'm sure Andre's mom would be the one to say: "Cal, you have to eat more! You're so thin!")

- Andre was not always seen with the Gabriel's (because Cal's sister HATES andre with all her guts) but Calvin was ALWAYS seen with the kriegman's. Andre's dad always knew that when he mentioned "family vacation/trip", Cal was tagging along.

-Cal learned to stay calm when Andre had his bpd splits (extreme anger most of the time). There was a time when he actually felt rlly bad when Andre said what things to him or just screamed and pushed him around, but as time passed, he learned it was just another normal thing on Andre. That's why in the car scene, he at first didn't take him seriously, he then shut the fuck up and tried to get out of the situation as quickly as he could afterwards.

- Andre never really knew what the fuck was wrong with him. He wasn't like Cal, he didn't get diagnosed with shit and didn't even went to a psychologist. He thought he was just really aggressive and nothing more.

- Andre was low-key an alcoholic. He never got blackout drunk though

- The only thing Andre didn't clean, was his car. Maybe once in a month (or a week if there where a lot of empty beer cans in the back seats)

- Cal rlly liked sour candies.

- Andre slept A LOT.

- idk if I said this b4 but Andre's hand was always on Cal's thigh while he drove

- most of their hangouts were sleepovers. They seriously couldn't live without each other

- OF COURSE the reason why andre didn't like Rachel it's because he was EXTREMELY jealous of her. He felt like she was taking Cal away from him. He also felt that she talked shit about Cal when he wasn't there. The night Cal ditched Rachel for him, Andre's ego was 100% fueled

- Andre had migraines. Yeah. He didn't throw up though

- Following, andre NEVER puked. Like, he probably just threw up 1 time in his life. Cal on the other hand, every time he got sick, he vomited.

-Cal ALWAYS forgot his things EVERYWHERE. His parents didn't even make him his own keys, because they knew Cal would probably lose them too.

- As kids, Cal adored sharks and Andre lions and bears. (Cal adored sharks all his life though)

- Andre's grandparents who lived in Germany, had a bigass house with a garden. They had ALSO, a bigass dog. Of course Andre as a kid spent most of the time in the garden, playing with his brother and the dog.

- The only thing that made Andre calm down when he was angry, was changing the situation, making him forget about it, talking about another thing or doing another thing that isn't related to the reason he's mad. Distract him and make him forget why he was mad in the first place.

[fellthemarvelous]

Invisible scars

(TW: religious trauma)

Looking at me, you wouldn't know that I've survived religious trauma. The marks of religious trauma are seldom visible. In fact, I had no idea for the longest time that I had religious trauma (I thought it was a thing that happened to other people). I simply spent decades questioning the reasons I felt like I was so broken on in the inside. I kept trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and why I never felt happy or like I was never able to connect to anyone. I had no idea that my experience with the church as a small child is what shaped me into the anxiety-ridden, majorly depressed disaster creature I am today.

I spent 12 years learning inside of Catholic schools. It has taken me more than 20 years to process and deconstruct, and I am always going to be a work in progress. I was brainwashed into believing the very worst about myself, and I was always just beyond saving because I had the misfortune of being a woman in a church that taught us that women experience pain during childbirth as a natural consequence of Eve eating the apple, which is why they enjoy making us suffer in the first place. They taught us that Adam ate the apple because Eve seduced him, so even though Adam also ate the apple, his sin still wasn't as bad as Eve's because she did it first and used sex to get him to do the same. They placed the blame for Original Sin squarely on Eve and thus onto every single girl who entered the church. If a boy did something to me that I didn't like, it's probably because I did something to provoke him first.

Do you know what I learned to do at a very young age just to be able to cope with that?

I learned to use humor to deflect when I was struggling. I smile when I don't want people to know I'm sad. I laugh at inappropriate times, especially when I'm uncomfortable. I learned to bottle up all of my emotions because expressing anything other than happiness is bad. I learned to compartmentalize. I taught myself how to pull out the right emotion for the right occasion because I was always striving to be who I thought everyone else wanted me to be. It was exhausting.

In the midst of all of this, I'm trying to figure out which parts of me are really me and which parts of me are things that were put into my head. If you've experienced indoctrination, you know what I'm talking about. They pulled us apart as small children and placed us in specific boxes and told us that deviating from the norm was bad.

Crowley is a fallen angel. His change from angel to demon is drastic on the outside.

You know he fell and that his wings turned black and he ended up in a pool of boiling sulfur. It's the reason Crowley is so easy to sympathize with. He suffered unfairly because of arbitrary rules that deemed him unforgivable. He's accepted that part of himself. He's clever and creative and it has helped him find ways to get out of doing his job for centuries. Hell doesn't care how jobs get done just as long as someone does them, and at this point humanity is doing more to damn themselves than the demons are able to keep up with. They're tired and overworked. Hell is overpopulated even though it should be infinite in size. Crowley wants no part of that system because he sees it for what it is, just as he sees Heaven for what it is. He has the marks to prove that he is one of the damned, but that has given him all the perspective he needs to see that both sides are fucked up and toxic and "irredeemable" (just like him). He has yet to fully let go of the hold Heaven has over him because of how badly he got hurt.

Aziraphale is still an angel.

He never fell, and he doesn't know why. He has lied to God. He has lied to Gabriel repeatedly. He lies to protect Crowley. He lies to protect humanity.

Remember, Crowley and Aziraphale started off in the same place.

They both started off as angels who were created to do God's bidding. Aziraphale is the one who told Crowley what he'd heard about everything shutting down in 6,000 years. He was simply trying to make conversation. He didn't think it was something Crowley would object to. Angels were just supposed to go along with God's plans, but Crowley had a different opinion and was vocal about it. Where did Aziraphale get his information in the first place? Why does nobody ever ask this question?

Aziraphale knows Heaven is toxic. He's not blind. We need to move past this idea that because he still has love for God that he doesn't know Heaven is fucked up. He never fell, and it's something he still fears because who the hell doesn't fear the thought of eternal torment, especially if you know it's real? God has never cast him out of Heaven though and he doesn't know why. It's probably something that hangs over his head like the Sword of Damocles.

Letting go is not an easy task. Aziraphale has always been an angel. He didn't have his identity ripped from him the same way that Crowley did. Crowley had to adapt to a brand new way of existing because he was cast out of Heaven.

Crowley's trauma is evident on the outside. Aziraphale's trauma is hidden on the inside. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

Crowley was an angel and then he was a demon, but he doesn't want to be labeled as either.

Aziraphale has only ever known how to be an angel. He's only ever known the ways of Heaven.

I'm only in my early 40s. It has taken me 20+ years to undo 12 years of religious abuse. Aziraphale is immortal. He and Crowley have abandoned their jobs, but four years in the space of millions isn't a lot. No one overcomes indoctrination in four years. Especially when you had millions of years of blind obedience indoctrinated into you. It simply does not work that way no matter how much you want to believe it can.

It has taken me more than two decades to learn how to stop hating myself. I still have no idea how to love myself, but it's something I'm trying to learn.

My entire identity was wrapped up in what the church told me it would be. Once I fully denounced it and all organized religion, I found out I had no idea who I was. No one had prepared me for a life outside of this one very specific identity and role that I was expected to fill based on a very specific box I was placed into.

I still struggle with black and white concepts. It's hard to unlearn when you have no other basis for comparison, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. It means that these changes do not and will not ever happen overnight.

The fall didn't just affect the demons though. It affected the angels as well. Look at how tightly wound the angels are. They're always trying to do the good thing, but they have no idea what that actually means, and you realize this when Uriel asks The Metatron if they had done something wrong. They are scared of making mistakes, but none of them know what they are supposed to be doing since Gabriel disrupted the status quo. You can see they are unsure of themselves and of each other. The concept of free will is so foreign to them, but Aziraphale showed all of them that it was in their grasp when he allowed Gabriel and Beelzebub to decide where to go so they could be together.

It takes a lot of audacity (and sheer ignorance) to dismiss Aziraphale as power-hungry and abusive.

Aziraphale did nothing to punish Gabriel and Beelzebub. He allowed them to leave because they were in love with each other, and he knows what that feels like. He thought he was about to get the same fate with Crowley until The Metatron showed up and refused to take no for an answer.

He doesn't want to fix Heaven because he thinks it's perfect. If he thought it was perfect he wouldn't want to fix it.

Aziraphale is going back into the Lion's Den. He knows what he's going up against. He's been humiliated and belittled and abused by Heaven for thousands of years.

His scars are there even though you can't see them, and he hides his pain with humor and silliness.

When I see people advocating for Aziraphale to suffer even more because they don't think he has suffered enough, I find myself sitting back in one of those classrooms in Catholic school being told that I deserve the bad things that happen to me because I somehow failed to measure up to some impossible metric. The cruelty of that mindset aimed at Aziraphale is kinda the reason Crowley hates Heaven in the first place because he's been there too.

And as someone who is processing religious trauma, it's disheartening to see people say that because Aziraphale has yet to fully let go of Heaven that he deserves harsher treatment. Crowley would definitely not agree with that sentiment.

[vidavalor]

Hello! 👋 Just dropping in for a visit to my favourite online pub: your blog *chews on all your posts and slurps down your analyses*

I love the way you spell out the Ineffable Husband SpeakTM for us, and I was wondering what you think about Crowley’s “You don’t dance.” in 2.06, when Aziraphale asked to dance with him?

Crowley is mumbling a bit here & I wasn’t sure at first if he said “you” or “we” or something else, so I checked the subtitles as well. That aside, we know by this point that Aziraphale has done at least 3 I-Was-Wrong dances, so I wonder if Crowley is referring to something else?

Hi, @procrastiel! How's it going, love? Wouldn't say I spell anything out-- I just give my opinion-- but I appreciate the compliment! 💕Crowley's line is definitely "you don't dance" and ohh, yeah, I can deep dive on my opinion on what it means to dance. Deepest of dives-- this went everywhere. 😂 Mother of all metas for the mother of all Good Omens questions... We're having sandwiches-the-food tonight in honor of where your question crosses into God's tongue-in-cheek monologue on how many angels can get down on the heads of those Mrs. Sandwich seamstressing tools-- pins.

This is going to take a route through some heavy analysis of the argument over Gabriel and The Apology Dance and a few other things to get the root of your question, so, grab a beverage of choice before diving in. TW: Brief mentions of Satan's attacks on Crowley.

*rubs hands together and cues up the disco music* 😂

What does it mean to dance?

When we talk about dancing, there are roughly four different meanings of the word to look at with relation to Good Omens' story.

One meaning is the first one that comes to mind for most people, which is a physical dance-- as in, moving your body, usually to music.

The music, if it exists, can be in your head, a song you're singing aloud, or one that is playing in the room-- it doesn't matter. If you're moving, any and all of it would qualify as dancing. By this measure? Crowley canonically had seen Aziraphale dance before Aziraphale asked him to dance during The Meeting Ball because, well...

...here is Aziraphale dancing in front of Crowley in the bookshop in 1941:

Crowley's shock in 2.06 cannot be coming from never having seen Aziraphale dance at all, right? They've known each other for thousands of years and if Aziraphale was doing this fucking adorable little shuffle of excitement in the bookshop in 1941 then it's not really a stretch to assume that these two-- who canonically listen to records together in the evenings sometimes-- have danced together before.

In 1941, we see that Aziraphale liking to dance is not something he's actually hiding from Crowley because he's doing this cute little dance in front of him without a second thought. This is also interesting because one theory was that Crowley has no idea about Aziraphale liking to dance at all because he didn't appear to know about Aziraphale learning the gavotte. S2 turns that on its head a bit by saying that Crowley might not yet know about the gavotte-- we don't really know yet either way-- but he definitely does know that Aziraphale likes to dance and he was unsurprised to see him doing so in 1941.

The key thing here is that when they have danced together or in front of one another before? It was likely only in the privacy of the bookshop or another place like it. It was just the two of them.

When Crowley says "you don't dance" to Aziraphale, he's not meaning that Aziraphale doesn't dance at all. He's meaning something more expansive, as we'll look at with the other meanings of dancing below.

The second meaning is a verbal dance. These are interactions between more than one person in which the back-and-forth of what is being spoken has the give-and-take quality of a dance.

There can be different types of verbal dancing. Crowley and Aziraphale's word-nerdy flirting is a kind of verbal dance. It's a birdsong mating dance, especially since they are so hot for words. Being able to verbally entice and keep up with a partner makes flirting-- especially their kind of it-- a kind of dance and it's one they've been doing for thousands of years and both enjoy.

Another type of verbal dance between long-time partners is one that could be dubbed, as Crowley and Aziraphale call it, an "I Was Wrong" dance. This is an apology between partners who had an argument but want to get beyond it. No matter what you think the nature of Crowley & Aziraphale's relationship is, they've known each other for thousands of years and are de facto partnership married at this point so they have An Apology Routine TM. People who have been together a long time and who have the occasional spat often tend to fall into a rhythm with their apologies, knowing what needs to be said to just get to the other side of it, which they'd like to do as soon as possible because they miss each other and don't like being in conflict with one another.

When Aziraphale says he wants "a proper apology... with the little dance" as Crowley tries to get away with not doing the verbal dance that he knows he's going to end up doing lol, what Aziraphale means is that he wants the back-and-forth verbal dance they do as an apology. He doesn't want to just ignore what happened because he was really pissed and he's telling Crowley that he'd appreciate an actual apology and a bit of groveling before he's willing to let it go and move on.

The "little dance" in question isn't a physical dance-- it's basically the same apology dance we saw Crowley do back in S1 here:

When Crowley claimed he doesn't "do the dance" in S2, they both knew that wasn't true and so did we, really, because *points to the above gif* there's Crowley doing the dance in the middle of the street in S1. Claiming he doesn't "do the dance" is sometimes part of the dance if Crowley is the one apologizing as, unless Hell is actively, in that moment, trying to kill him-- like they were in S1-- he gets squirmy about apologies, even if he always eventually says them.

The reason why Crowley does the physical dance that he does during The Apology Dance is actually off of Aziraphale being just as dryly self-deprecating about the two of them and their relationship as Crowley winds up showing he is with The Apology Dance. It's rooted in Aziraphale's use of the word proper.

That word falls into the category in their speak of words like wily, thwart, smitten, demon, fiend, etc.. that have wildly contrasting meanings where they can be said on one level to mean one thing that is acceptable to an audience of angels, demons, or humans, but that also, on another level and within Crowley and Aziraphale's speak, has a funnier, more sexualized meaning.

Proper has an understood meaning of being something that is correct, acceptable, and appropriate. It means decent and respectable. It has a connotation that suggests that something deemed proper falls within the generally-accepted social rules of a society.

Within that word, though? Is the word prop.

I probably do not need to further define that but one sense of the word prop is that it is a theatrical term to describe an object being used in a play. From this, it also come to mean an object being used in sexual play. The humor for Crowley and Aziraphale comes from the fact that proper is a word related to what is considered acceptable in society while bedroom activities involving props have historically been considered "deviant" by those same societies.

The word exists in the sexual meaning in several other scenes in Good Omens. Such as:

Aziraphale in 1941 flirting with Crowley in the magic shop by using the silver rings magic trick as an innuendo-laden stand-in for handcuffs and going on about having a "gift for prop"... and in 2019, when Crowley joked that Aziraphale did not need to do his literal magic act because: "You can do proper magic. You can make things disappear."

Words containing the word thin relate to Crowley and disappear/appear are words with a root meaning of to come into view-- heavy emphasis on the to come part. Crowley sounds like he's talking about Aziraphale's supernatural magic abilities (and he likely also is lol) but he's wording it in such a way as to be really referring to Aziraphale's other skills as a true magician in bed.

Aziraphale, hilariously, teasing Crowley back by joking that making him come is not as fun as pulling a coin out of his ear 😂:

This is also the joke around Aziraphale doing things like popping into view from around corners or doorways or, in my favorite, from the other side of The Bentley in S2, as well as things like Crowley apparating into a space to see Aziraphale. They're magical so they can apparate-- literally appear and disappear from view-- and would do so to meet up with one another at times, as we've seen. It's a visual joke on appear/disappear and the verb to come.

There is also the hilarious "only I can properly thwart the wiles of the demon Crowley" from the deleted 1800 bookshop opening scene-- a sentence made up basically entirely of words with double meaning that make them sound like Aziraphale is saying to Gabriel and Sandalphon that he's the only one who can correctly stop Crowley's evil demonicness when he's also, with the same words, trying to alert Crowley, who has just arrived in the doorway, to the fact that the angels are here to recall him by saying a sentence that is like: but you can't take me back to Heaven! I'm the only one who has the first clue how to shag Crowley right.

So, in S2, Aziraphale is being a bit arch when he says he wants "a proper apology." They both know that he means it in terms of saying he wants a genuine, decent apology and nothing more than that. His dryness in choice and delivery of the word proper is Aziraphale being tongue-in-cheek with Crowley and aligning their history of well-balanced, healthy, sexual power dynamics with the fact that their argument was, at the core, a lot about aspects of trust and control that they *both* struggle with outside of their proper bedroom, where things are very different.

The argument was really a perfect storm of triggering both of their traumas and they both, technically, were right and wrong about things. Aziraphale's apology dance is, essentially, the whole 'our car/our bookshop' that becomes the rest of the season. The reason why it's Crowley doing The Apology Dance, though, is actually less about the subject matter of their argument and more about which one of them fucked up when it came to the stuff the argument shows us that they're working on together.

The argument over Gabriel actually shows us the extent to which they're a couple, in that they've clearly talked about working on things they do which trigger each other's trauma and are trying to be better at it. They're proactively working at trying to get better at arguing, which is the most married thing in creation. This is also indicative of both of them trying to manage different traumas and PTSD that they have and doing the best they can do while still not yet able to fully escape the root causes of those difficulties. That is something which any therapist will tell you is nearly impossible to do but they are both trying anyway and doing a pretty good job of it actually, all things considered. Where can we see this in the argument over Gabriel?

It is in that they each both do something when upset that is a trigger for the other's trauma and has, in the past, caused their discussions to implode, and how they both handle that with one another during this argument. When Aziraphale gets upset and anxious, his anger can take the form of saying words he doesn't mean-- words that are often completely and utterly absurd from an objective standpoint. Think of the bandstand argument, for instance, and Aziraphale's ludicrous attempt to say that he and Crowley aren't friends and-- the best one lol-- that he doesn't even like Crowley.

The audience and Crowley alike know this is bullshit and so does Aziraphale but it's the product of Heaven being a place of emotional repression and Aziraphale's perfectionism, which makes him feel like he's not supposed to ever actually feel the depression and anxiety and anger that he does. When upset, this bubbles up in him and explodes and the results are words he doesn't mean that make him feel terrible, further contribute to his pattern of negative self-thoughts, and hurt Crowley.

In S2, we might also notice, Aziraphale phrases his go-to of telling Crowley it's over as a defense mechanism as saying that Crowley is "at liberty to go", which has an implication that a certain amount of staying was occurring. While Crowley isn't living in the shop to the extent that he's there in the mornings because they're still trying not to get caught, this plus things like "we both get plenty of use out of it [the bookshop], don't we?" indicate that Aziraphale never really notices that Crowley no longer has his flat because Crowley just kind of lives in the bookshop now. He's there every day, to a point that Aziraphale defaulting to his usual anger response of breaking up with Crowley when upset is now phrased in such a way as to try to kick him out of the house. Crowley, though, knows better-- just like how Aziraphale knows better where Crowley's own issues are concerned.

Even though Crowley knows Aziraphale doesn't mean what he says when he's upset and is patient about it (the not even batting an eyelash "you doooo" in response to "I don't even like you" in the bandstand argument), it still hurts. So, that's what Aziraphale is trying to work on and we see that Crowley is working on it with him, an example of that being when Aziraphale is starting to lose it during the Gabriel argument and Crowley's response to it:

Crowley is basically saying honey, you're doing the thing-- and it works. This is what they've agreed upon as a way that Crowley can help Aziraphale when he's upset. He points out that Aziraphale is doing the thing he does, which seems to be something they've agreed on as a strategy for communicating better. He gives Aziraphale room to take a breath and say what he really means. Expressing how he really feels when the emotions are not positive ones is hard for Aziraphale because it involves admitting that he has these emotions in the first place.

So, Aziraphale does his part in their agreement and he rephrases what he was saying into what he actually means: that he would love for Crowley to help him with Gabriel but that if he won't, he won't. He is open about how he feels, which is Aziraphale doing what they agreed to do, and is a world of difference from how they were fighting before. He also expresses it in an especially positive way, as he uses words like 'love' and 'help' to say how he feels and what he needs.

This is why it's Crowley who winds up doing The Apology Dance.

What Crowley does in an argument that triggers Aziraphale is to leave. While, technically, sometimes leaving for a breath is not a terrible strategy in an argument, Crowley's tendency to leave is a flight-or-fight PTSD response that stems from a lack of trust in anyone but himself (and, honestly, often not even himself) to keep him safe. It's honestly not how he really feels about Aziraphale, whom he actually does trust with himself, but he sometimes lets fear and anxiety overwhelm him when triggered by situations in a way that relates to his past traumatic experiences.

Just as Aziraphale's struggle with his more volatile emotions is understandable considering what he's been through, so is Crowley's tendency to panic and bolt. The problem is that, just as Aziraphale's angry words can hurt Crowley, even if he understands where they come from and knows Aziraphale doesn't mean them, Crowley's tendency to leave hurts Aziraphale because it feels to him that Crowley doesn't trust him to make decisions that would keep Crowley safe.

They both are aware that their knee-jerk reactions of running away or sniping in anger are trauma responses and not terribly logical but they're both working on trying to heal enough to not have those responses with one another. In S2, they're stuck trying to manage all of that while still living in an environment that is dangerous for them and in which Armageddon could be around the corner again at any moment-- making it obviously harder to deal with things and also making the fact that they are both doing reasonably well with it all the more impressive and an indicator of how good they are for one another.

(It also makes the end of S2-- a series of miscommunications, some of which are not even their fault, that led to epic fucking disaster-- even more devastating because it doesn't actually reflect the healthy relationship that the beginning of the season emphasizes exists.)

Compounding these issues and part of why they're trying to work on them is that both of them trigger each other's PTSD when they react like this.

Aziraphale's words in anger and his tendency to push Crowley away leave Crowley feeling less secure around the one person who otherwise is the safest person he's ever met while Crowley's tendency to bolt in a panic, instead of staying and working through things, triggers Aziraphale's fear of abandonment (both in general and with Crowley) and, even more so, his terror over losing Crowley.

He's never sure when Crowley goes out the door if he's ever coming back because it's not really safe for him out there and S2 illustrates that Aziraphale has real trauma dating back to the time Crowley was taken in front of him in 1827, shown in him going to the spot in Edinburgh in the present where he lost Crowley and needing to call him from it to hear his voice. And, well, also to get a bonus praise kinky little boost from his partner for a job well done on working on his trauma stuff:

So, long story short, the argument they have over what to do about Gabriel's arrival really illustrates the extent to which they're both trying to manage a great deal of trauma together and, to help one another to do so, they have put some strategies into place for trying to do that more effectively. Aziraphale kept to his end of the bargain in this argument. He used more productive and open words to express how he was feeling. Crowley, though, did not hold up his end of the bargain here. He did when it came to helping Aziraphale with Aziraphale's part of it but he didn't when it came to managing his own trauma.

To be fair to Crowley? This situation was basically the exact perfect storm of a trigger for his PTSD and neither he nor Aziraphale are really going to be able to get much of anywhere significant with healing until all of this Heaven & Hell stuff is over in S3. So, that he fucked this up here is both sympathetic and not terribly surprising. It's also the root of him then spending the season reassuring Aziraphale that he's coming back and part of why he goes out the door in the end of 2.06 but he stays by the car. But, when it comes to just this argument over Gabriel in 2.01, it was Crowley who didn't try and that made Aziraphale upset.

This is where, though, that The Apology Dance shows that they're actually pretty healthy about arguing overall. Just the mention of this having existing for ages is establishing that trying to be better at disagreeing and having this little routine for getting back to a good place and starting to talk more after they've argued is not just something that has existed post-S1 but has been going on for, at minimum, hundreds of years, if not a whole lot longer. In essence, The Apology Dance exists as a bridge back to a place where they are less reactive and can talk through what's upsetting them-- which a lot of evidence suggests they are actually very good at doing with one another.

So, when Aziraphale tells Crowley that he wants "a proper apology", he's already injecting some humor into the moment, even if he is serious about not letting Crowley just skip over genuinely saying he is sorry. He is upset but he also loves Crowley and he's aware that the situation was pretty much the ultimate trigger for Crowley. It's just difficult for Aziraphale to watch because he wants Crowley to feel safe enough to heal more from a lot of this and feels like that he can't fully provide that, even if he is doing everything in his power to help Crowley with it. In a way, it's a foreshadowing how Aziraphale is going to fall in the end of S2 over the temptation of power that he thinks might help Crowley be safe.

The reason why Aziraphale chooses to use the word proper in saying he wants an apology-- and in that particularly dry tone-- is because he is very, very pissed that Crowley walked out the door rather than trusted him to have not put him into danger with Gabriel and to help him manage the situation. He's pointing out that Crowley trusts him implicitly in so many other ways, with the use of the wordplay there being a reference to the fact that he and Crowley have a healthy balance of power and an enormous amount of trust in their relationship overall, for which Aziraphale is using their positive sexual power dynamics as an example.

As different scenes have illustrated, when they mess around with those dynamics, they switch off allowing one another a sense of control over the other, even if the overall dynamics of such situations are never as cut-and-dry as that. The point is that Aziraphale's use of proper here is a direct reference to the fact that Crowley went out the door in a panic-stricken fit earlier but they both know that Crowley does trust Aziraphale to a great degree, and a great example of that to Aziraphale is the fact that Crowley-- as eleven hundred scenes in the show suggest lol-- is very into letting Aziraphale restrain him in bed. The reason why we even know this is because of how the show uses aspects of their sexuality to illustrate the level of trust and intimacy in their relationship.

Just as the wall slam scene in S1 exists to make it abundantly clear how much Aziraphale trusts Crowley and how he has nothing to fear from him by contrasting that with Aziraphale's response to being jumped by the angels in the street, the scenes that are referring to them using restraints, while illustrating that they both do, are centered around Crowley's thing for it, in particular, to help illustrate that he has the same kind of trust in and feeling of safety with Aziraphale that Aziraphale does with him.

The reason why Crowley liking to be tied up or handcuffed is given weight enough that it's a recurring thing mentioned in the story is because of how it's a different level of trust for him than it might be for someone else. While the wall slam scene contrasts Aziraphale's safety with Crowley versus the abuse of the angels, the handcuff thing is showing that Crowley, who is a survivor of attacks that render him unable to move or otherwise assert any control over himself and who has demonstrable PTSD from it, trusts Aziraphale enough and feels safe with him enough to explore with him the complexities of being a survivor of attacks involving a loss of control who also finds sometimes being restrained and giving up some control in bed arousing.

So, Aziraphale's "proper apology" is dryly mocking both of their control and trust issues by use of an example of a place in their relationship where they handle those issues without conflict, and that's in the great communication and ease of care for one another in bed. With use of proper, Aziraphale is subtly pointing out that Crowley is an assault survivor who trusts Aziraphale to him tie him up but he runs out of other situations in a panic, which is an example of the lack of logic that can occur in the face of trauma sometimes. It helps to prove how ridiculous they both are really being in general.

Which Crowley agrees with. Because he knows he was. Trauma isn't logical, it's knee-jerk emotional, and he felt bad about storming out and even worse when he found out from Beez what the repercussions of not helping might be so he's come back, heard the 'proper' comment, and is like fine, yes, you're right. We're ridiculous. I was ridiculous.

This is healthy as all fuck:

It matches the humor Aziraphale put in around his genuine anger with additional humor. It's self-deprecating and ego-free, just an admittance of having messed up and showing he's sorry by being a little ridiculous because how he reacted earlier, he knows, was also a little ridiculous. There's the hearing of proper and responding to that with a mock-submissive, self-deprecating, little dance and a bow and scrape. There's a dry, affectionate mocking of the two of them and their long history of apology conversations that all boil down to the lyrics of the little song Crowley makes up here: "You were right, you were right, I was wrong, and you were right."

The tongue-in-cheek vibe of Yes, you're correct. Are you satisfied now, my king? that pokes gentle fun at both of them and that actually winds up illustrating just how much trust and love there is between them as a result.

Aziraphale finding it hilarious to a point that he's working hard not to laugh long enough to respond with equal humor with the little soft dom-ish "very nice" and then miming a kiss at Crowley showing that they are actually good at this. They allow each other to be imperfect, know how to talk openly about how that makes them feel, and can recover from an argument with humor and affection.

This is also a good example of Crowley being supportive of Aziraphale expressing emotions and of Aziraphale trusting Crowley as someone safe to do that around. Aziraphale told Crowley exactly how he felt and what he needed here in a clear way that expressed his anger and frustration without descension into anything harmful and Crowley listened, acknowledged those emotions, and responded in a way that was supportive and positive.

The argument over Gabriel and The Apology Dance is what their relationship is really like when they can speak openly and directly to one another because they have the safety and privacy to do so. They actually do know how to talk to one another and they do it very well. Their present situation as of the end of S2 is more of a nightmare of unfortunate events and misunderstandings and it actually took a lot to get it to go that wrong because, normally, as we can see? It's relatively easy for them to get it right.

So, Crowley's Apology Dance was both verbal and a literal dance, yes, but Aziraphale's bemused response to it indicates he wasn't expecting the literal dance and the fact that Crowley made up and did the literal dance off of Aziraphale's use of proper, as we looked at, indicates that it was something he did for the first time in that moment, rather than how The Apology Dance usually goes.

The usual nature of Crowley and Aziraphale's "I Was Wrong" Dance is strictly verbal.

We can tell this by one of the years in which Aziraphale mentions that he did an "I Was Wrong" dance in the past: 1793.

When Aziraphale shows that he's really hurt by Crowley leaving and needs him to apologize, he lists three, prior times when it was Aziraphale who had fucked something up between them and was the one doing The Apology Dance as a result. The three years he uses as shorthand are 1650, 1793 and 1941. While we don't know anything about 1650 right now... and while we know about 1941 but not how it ends so maybe not yet quite enough to say we know why Aziraphale was doing an apology dance (though I would argue that maybe 1941 itself is a bit of a joint apology dance)... the one year here we do know enough about to use to inform our opinion about what their apology dances usually are is 1793.

What Aziraphale is apologizing for in 1793 is the rescue scenario winding up a bit of a disaster because of Aziraphale neglecting to take into account that if Jean-Claude The Executioner was having that much fun cutting people's heads off, he probably was disturbing in other ways as well. While Crowley covers up his reaction to apparating into the room just as Aziraphale is saying "no" and Jean-Claude is trying to get his clothes off, by the end of the scene, we see that Crowley is more bothered than he was letting on.

Jean-Claude becomes the only human in the entire series to date that we ever see Crowley intentionally push straight towards Hell and, in doing so, he renders Jean-Claude unable to form more than muted sounds of protest-- not at all projecting his own experiences of assault onto him or anything. Crowley makes the very dark joke that's in the above gif, savagely mocking a so-common-it's-cliche victim-blaming response to rape, making it clear in doing so what's been brought up for him as a result of what he saw when he first came into the room. Crowley is half out of it for the last moments of the scene and, at one point, sniffs like he's trying not to cry. Aziraphale had meant for it to be a fun, dashing-hero-to-the-rescue type of thing but the torture-happy prison cell atop the trauma trigger is what would make Aziraphale feel the need to apologize afterwards, even though Crowley knew he didn't intend any harm.

So, ask yourself this: did Aziraphale apologize for that by doing a silly dance?

I really don't think he did...

It wouldn't have been appropriate. The last thing Aziraphale would have done then is make light of how they both were feeling about something relating to this kind of trauma. It's not to say there wasn't any humor involved-- particularly, their form of really dark gallows humor-- but not in the midst of the genuine, actual apology. Aziraphale's "I Was Wrong" dance in 1793 was a back-and-forth of him verbally apologizing and Crowley insisting that it was fine and then Aziraphale, more or less, you were right and I was wrong-ing with other words until they both were okay to talk more and move forward.

Both of them were alright as a result and clearly had a memorable time in Paris afterwards, as Aziraphale is referencing it as a good example of the two of them working through things together in a positive way when he tells Crowley that Paris, 1793 is what he "wants for lunch" in 2008.

It's really why Aziraphale says he wants 1793 in the first place, when they have a zillion other times he could have referenced. The scene in 2008 is taking place after Crowley went missing the night before on assignment for Hell. Aziraphale doesn't need to be told by this point that Crowley was hurt but they've been in public the entire time since they've met up so there has not yet been a moment to try to really acknowledge it. By bringing up Paris 1793 in response to Crowley saying he wants to lunch, Aziraphale is using it as a shorthand to convey both that he's aware and that they'll handle it, like they always do, and it will all be alright. Paris 1793 seems like it is a particularly memorable example of them managing that to them, so it's the one that Aziraphale brings up.

This also accounts for the discrepancy in Aziraphale's expressions in 2008 when he talks about this particular time. When he first mentions Paris 1793, his response is layered. There's regret mixed in there. Pain. Complicated emotions. His smile to Crowley is kind of flat, like he's trying to remain more upbeat than he actually feels.

It's very different from the cheer of we had crepes! that emerges after Crowley's response to the suggestion is positive. It speaks to Paris 1793 being more complex than only the fun, memorable romp in France that it also was.

So, this would mean that The Apology Dance is usually a verbal thing, even though Crowley did a literal dance along with it in S2. This actually is not terribly surprising because Crowley and Aziraphale's language is an exercise in the literal and the figurative.

Everything in it physically exists as well as figuratively exists and that's part of the fun of it for them. It all has to work on the surface level as well as on other levels. There are literal crepes and figurative crepes, for example, while we're on the 1793 topic. Literal fish-- sushi, gravlax in dill sauce, etc..-- and figurative fish, like the two of them. When Aziraphale asked for "the little dance" of light grovel with the apology, Crowley did that by also giving him a literal dance to go along with their traditionally verbal dance. Why? Because Aziraphale called their apology routine a figurative "little dance", so Crowley gave him a literal one to go with it. Eventually, all the figurative has to be at least a little literal in some way. It's why God made sure that an actual nightingale-the-bird was actually singing in Berkeley Square at the end of S1 as her last language lesson to us. There were then now literal angels dining at The Ritz so a literal nightingale sang in literal Berkeley Square.

The S2 Apology Dance is likely then the first Apology Dance that involved a physical dance. I'm not sure that there were others in the past but I think there definitely will be more going forward and that's a good thing since a bit of silliness is very healthy. 😊

Ok, so, back to the "you don't dance" moment... remember ten years ago when I said there were roughly four meanings of dance?

We've defined two of them already: a literal, physical dance and a verbal dance. The other two are the dance of society and dance as sexual euphemism. Historically, these weren't always mutually exclusive things and Good Omens overlaps them in some ways a bit as well.

The dance of society is being an open, active participant in your society. Even though Aziraphale basically built the society around him through being the founder of the street, we've seen how he tends to keep himself one step removed from life on Whickber Street.

It's best summed up by his relationship to The Whickber Street Shopkeepers & Traders Association: he is a member of it but, until S2, he's never hosted the monthly meeting. He doesn't fully see himself as one of them because, as an angel, he's not supposed to want any of this human living stuff, even if he desperately does. He has imposter syndrome for days, feeling like he's always about to be exposed as not really one of them.

Aziraphale does enjoy himself at times. He does engage with the world around him. He just doesn't allow himself to belong to it and his reasons for doing so are not only about his angel feelings.

The human world hasn't always been a place where he fit, either.

It's only been very recently in history-- and Aziraphale has seen literally *all* of history-- when it has been comparatively safe enough for people like him and Crowley to live more openly. It's still not completely safe, obviously and unfortunately, but there is more general acceptance now, more acknowledged human rights and more laws to help secure those rights.

The things that Crowley was hoping were around the corner in 1967-- when England decriminalized homosexual sex between men over the age of 21 and he suggested that maybe he and Aziraphale could go for broke and try being less of a secret-- actually are here by the present of the story in both S1 and S2.

A lot of that is at the root of the humor in S2 as Gabriel's presence in the shop forces Crowley and Aziraphale out onto Whickber Street in the daylight for the first time and creates scenarios in which the shopkeepers-- chiefly, Nina-- are throwing them off by being more comfortable with having their relationship be acknowledged publicly than they are. Part of the joke is that they're still closeted in London Soho in the year 2023 and the humans cannot understand why because Crowley and Aziraphale can't tell them that it's their supernatural world causing them to remain a secret.

It is only relatively recently in human history that people at formal social gatherings like the ones in England that Aziraphale has been to for years danced with anybody they felt like, regardless of relationship or lack thereof to that person. For many years, while someone might stand up with the occasional maiden aunt out of politeness or whatever, most of the time, a request for a slot on a dance card was a declaration of romantic intent. It was done within the public eye and, while matchmaking was often economical more than romantic, it was at the heart of how society functioned.

To dance, in that sense, was to be a part of society.

Aziraphale was never a part of society in that way. Not just because he's an angel who is supposed to remain above the human fray but because he is queer and society, for a long time, was not built to openly accept him. He was on the fringes of it for both supernatural and human reasons. From what we've seen, literal, physical dancing has always been something of a metaphor for this struggle for Aziraphale.

When Crowley says that Aziraphale doesn't dance-- and it's really more, as we've seen, that Aziraphale doesn't dance in public-- what he means it that Aziraphale keeps himself back from being a fully engaged part of the group, out of a fear that it's not for him because both the supernatural and the human worlds have been teaching him for a long time that it is not.

To host a meeting of the local business association and have everyone to his house for a party... to have Gabriel and Maggie under the same roof... to have everyone knowing that Crowley is his partner... to be able to openly dance with Crowley in front of others like the couple that they are, in the same way that the Chengs and Mutt and his spouse are?

That is to dance.

That is Aziraphale trying for a life he's never had before.

It is this form of dancing-- the dance of society-- that Crowley has never seen Aziraphale do before and why he is so in shock when Aziraphale asks him to dance.

This is where we have to talk about what this has to do with the gavotte, the photo from 1941, Mrs. Sandwich, Duns Scotus, and disco... 🪩Yes, I know. Lots to chat about. 😊

Back in S1, as Crowley traps Hastur in his answering machine, we are treated to one of the best parts of God's narration: Her cheeky take on the human philosophical debate around the question:

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

The phrase comes from Protestant theologians in the 17th century who were mocking Catholic scholastics like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus-- whose name is quite literally the origin of the word dunce, so overt was the mocking of these dudes' ideas. The show via Crowley also is referring to Duns Scotus in Demon's Guide to Angelic Beings when Crowley mocks the demons by spelling 'residence' as 'residunce' in Aziraphale's entry, joking with him about the fact that the demons will not be able to understand what the entries really contain. So, why the mocking of Duns Scotus and pals?

While it's not totally know if they ever did debate this question exactly, questions very much like it were debated in their circle and others in different parts of the world and these philosophers would get a bit in the weeds in the wrong direction with things. This isn't to say there is a right or a wrong way to think so much as to say the way they chose to approach questions like this was full of absurd focus on the least consequential things someone could look at and failing to really think about how considering these questions at all could impact their understanding of the world around them and contribute to making that world better.

They were not asking questions like: do angels exist in the first place? If they do, do they dance? If so, what makes them want to dance? What would it say about angels and living-- and us and living-- if angels did dance? Why the fuck would they want to dance on the head of a pin when they could dance anywhere? 😂 What does it say about us and our views on angels and ourselves that we're spending a great deal of time and resources debating questions about beings that we cannot even prove fucking exist in the first place?

Instead of considering anything like that, Duns Scotus and pals would spend time just working on the most arcane details of angelic and demonic existences-- on things like trying to figure out if angels could exist in more than one place at once or how small they could get and how they would get that small and how many of them could fit on the proverbial head of a pin and still dance on there?

You know... real, relevant, thought-provoking, big picture questions that we've all asked ourselves at one time or another. 😂

Those mocking questions like this made the question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" a kind of catch-all for pointless debate and it has since become a shorthand phrase meaning basically a bullshit question of no relevance, the debate over which is a colossal fucking waste of time.

Some scholars went so far as to blame those engaging in this type of debate as being responsible for the fall of Constantinople, saying that basically these scholars were sitting around listening to themselves talk on absurd things of no importance to such an extent that it caused mass death and collapsed an empire.

It might be of note then that this question is so notoriously tied to the fall of Constantinople that Good Omens might be winking at the fact that angels dancing around a seamstress might be a prelude to Aziraphale's fall, which some of us think is what's happening at the end of S2.

So, when Hastur and Crowley go into Crowley's answering machine, God jumps in with a little wink to this question in an effort to prevent anyone from focusing on the single most non-important question in all of Good Omens:

How did they get into the answering machine?

The answer to that is that it doesn't matter. They're magical-- that's the answer.

It's not to say that there is not a ton of small detail in Good Omens worth exploring-- and other scenes encourage doing just that, like Shakespeare's "in your role as the audience, could you give us something more to work with?-- but the details worth looking at are ones that will underscore what the story is saying in a bigger picture, thematic sort of way.

God's point here is that if you're hung up on the Magical Technical Whateverness that is stuff like how the angels and demons travel, you're being a bit of a Duns Scotus and trying to solve a mystery that the show has zero intention of ever making be relevant to anything and doesn't really consider much of a mystery in the first place. You can sit there until you're blue in the face doing calculations and looking up scientific explanations and it just simply does not matter. You're barking up the wrong tree because the thing you're talking about has no significant relevance to the story.

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is basically the olden days, scholarly equivalent of rolling your eyes at half the comments in an online discussion for any sci-fi show that has ever existed. My friend and I call this kind of debate 'Photon Torpedo Jerk-Off' and what I mean by that is this: if you watch an episode of, say, Star Trek, and you think the most important thing to talk about that happened in the episode you just watched is whether or not these writers were accurate about the range of the photon torpedoes when they had the Enterprise blow up that Klingon warship, then you have missed the point of the episode entirely. If you're sitting around arguing about the sci-fi magical Whatever Tech and not talking about the story you've watched, you don't understand the point of what you've watched.

In Good Omens, the reason why God's monologue about how many angels can dance on the head a pin begins when it does is because it is a very sly joke on Duns Scotus-like debate, using the fact that the questions that were absurd to consider in real life are actually-- hilariously-- among the most pertinent to consider where Good Omens is concerned.

God brings up the pin-dancing question as a way to answer the question of what's happening with Crowley and Hastur going through the answering machine. She amusingly doesn't really answer the question and, instead, starts going on about the parts of "how many angel can dance on the head of a pin?" that should have been the bits being debated-- like whether or not angels dance at all and what if means that they do. Basically, Good Omens' response to how the answering machine bit works is "something something electrons" and they're proud of it and they should be because it doesn't fucking matter, which is why God's monologue in the answering machine sequence is really all about the bigger questions of the show and not the Duns Scotus-y question of "but how are they traveling through the telephone system exactly?" God simply just says that they are and moves onto more relevant things.

Even though the original debate over questions like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" was theological and philosophical, the thoughts behind the absurdity of it very much apply to interpreting works of art. Because of its ties to religion and to angels, it makes for a very humorous way of telling the Good Omens audience that they will not really be explaining much of anything regarding to the technical whatzits of how angels and demons travel through electricity and things like that because that could not be less relevant to understanding the story.

The question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?", at one point, also had several variants. One was the same question but wondering how many demons could dance on the head of a pin, while others involved whether or not angels were "sexless"-- a question that was so confusing at the time that several sub-variants emerged as a result because people weren't entirely sure what that question meant...

Was the question asking if angels had a biological sex-- and, if so, was it asking if they had sex organs? Was it asking if the angels had a form of gender which, at the time and with these theologians, was mostly a question of whether or not angels could be what humans would have called male or female, with gender binary ideas of what that would mean intact? Many others thought a question of whether or not angels were sexless might be more directly about whether or not angels had sex.

(Amusingly, that question didn't really ever get asked about demons, as the sexuality around demonic lore has always been pretty notorious.)

The problem with these questions being asked by theologians is that they never took the opportunity to reflect on what it might say about humans and our societies that we thought these the most pertinent questions to answer about angels and demons. They never stopped and thought about the fact that to ask these questions meant they were not sure that this supernatural world that they believed in had the same sort of structure when it came to things like gender, sex and sexuality that humans do and how that is where the more interesting thoughts exist. Just by asking those questions, you could start to follow a path that maybe suggested that they were different from humans and it might be better if humans emulated some of those ideas, right?

But that's definitely not where these guys took this...

When scholastics would approach questions like this, they'd do so to make the concepts of angels and demons fit more securely into the worldview they were promoting. The very conservative would usually say that angels were genderless and also usually "above" sex and things like this reinforced their holiness. The demons could usually fuck because they were evil and nephilim and the like made for the usual brand of good, scary, weirdly sexual Bible stuff. The ones that did think that angels did gender thought angels thought about it in the same very rigidly binary and traditional ways of most societies.

In other words? Theologians took the mythical creatures of angels and demons and made their theories about them fit human societies to further their own, human goals, instead of using angels and demons to reflect upon those human societies and consider how different viewpoints might improve them.

Good Omens is completely sending up this mindset.

In Good Omens, the supernatural characters are a way of poking fun at these kind of humans who approach ideas about what angels and demons might be like with such rigidity and treat their fellow humans in the same way. The angels and demons are basically all queer in human terms by default because, in Heaven/Hell, gender is a constellation, biological sex is a 'do whatever you want with that, if anything at all', and, just like with the humans, asexuality and sexuality and everything along every possible spectrum related to it all exist. For the most part, human prejudice does not exist-- though prejudice itself does, in the form of the "other"-izing of the demons. Some of that human prejudice has slipped through-- see: Sandalphon-- but it's not as ubiquitous as it is on Earth.

The angels and demons in Good Omens come from a world where everyone is sort of assumed straight-out-of-the-box non-binary by default and queerness is more normalized because when your concept of gender begins without rigid ideas about what that is, damn near everyone winds up being what humans would refer to as queer because that umbrella is then basically anyone other than a cisgendered, heterosexual person... and what is a cisgendered, heterosexual person when gender is design-your-own-concept-of-this from the get-go? How would anyone be heterosexual, when the definition of that is rooted in binary views on gender that do not exist in the supernatural world of Good Omens?

The point of all of it is that if humans thought this way about one another more, the world would be a better place. Good Omens is a story about angels and demons that is using them to ask questions about humanity of a lot more value than "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" but, ironically? Some questions that come about as a result of considering that question in a different way-- as God helps us to do with her monologue-- like the question of whether or not angels dance and consideration of what that might mean-- are examples of some of best questions to ask to get to the heart of what Good Omens is saying and what it's story is all about.

In Good Omens, neither the supernatural world nor the human world are perfect. The supernatural characters seek to learn how to really live from the humans but the humans have a thing or two to learn about themselves that the supernatural beings-- with their choose-your-own-adventure ideas relating to gender, in particular-- could show them when it comes to true freedom.

If we made like the supernatural world of Good Omens and placed less focus on defining and labeling gender and sexuality in such strict terms and just looked at everyone else as fellow people and let people present themselves as they like and identify as they like and be attracted to who they're attracted to and love who they love, we'd just be seeing each other all as people-- which is what we all are.

It's also the point of the intentional vagueness of Gabriel's whole situation during his naked arrival in 2.01.

There is a fuckton happening in this scene but one of the biggest is the decision to make it unclear as to what was behind the box-- and that's the point. Are there a couple of hints here and there? Sure. You can make arguments in different directions and, for sure, the decision to make it vague, instead of including a suggestion that Gabriel's for sure Don Drapering it in that moment is a whole decision in and of itself. The point, though, is not to fixate on determining what, if any, situation Gabriel was rocking during his rather challenging Monday morning in S2 but to just ask yourself why it would matter to know?

There's nothing wrong with some idle curiosity, I don't think, but the ambiguity is the point. What would it matter if Gabriel was running in angelic neutral or sporting, as I think the scene is suggesting, some lady parts for the morning? It doesn't change anything about Gabriel because only humans would look at Gabriel and assume that he has a penis and find it shocking if he didn't because many of us are that limited in thought. Only humans would box (bad, unintentional pun lol) him into pronouns as a result and try to tell him that he can't use he/him if he sometimes doesn't have that penis.

All these humans are looking at his body and judging it-- who gives them the right?

Whatever you feel about Gabriel, you do feel for him in that moment because no one deserves to have their body judged by a zillion critical strangers... and isn't that what many of us are doing online? Isn't that what a lot of humans do about everything from gender to sexuality to weight and looks? We categorize and label and put all of these parameters on meeting the standards of those categories when none of it matters and everyone is unique and beautiful in their own ways.

The genius of the supernatural characters in Good Omens is that, in so many ways, they are not free and a lot of their issues overlap with those of the humans but in real, fundamental ways, they have default mindsets that humanity could really benefit from adopting. The Gabriel arrival scene underlines it by turning the camera back around on us by showing us an example of a very masculine person by traditional human standards, implying that his genitalia might differ from what we've been conditioned to expect from a person with his looks, and then making us consider how we feel about that and if maybe the whole idea of these kind of expectations isn't bullshit in the first place.

So... while Good Omens is sending up the limited mindset of the Duns Scotuses of the world, the joke with God's monologue is that, in the context of Good Omens itself?

From the standpoint of this story?

The related questions about angels and dancing and gender and sex that arise from asking the question: "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" are excellent questions.

They happen to be questions that, if you're asking them, you're getting into many of the themes of the story and you're looking at how the story is using angels and demons to talk about the experience of human living. What does matter in understanding the story of Good Omens is, ironically, the dumbass questions that these humans were asking back in the day about dancing angels and demons and their relationships to human ideas about gender, sex and sexuality at which Good Omens is poking more than a little fun.

To add to this, we also have the very funny way in which God presents the answers to these questions to us and that involves a wink towards the last type of dancing-- dancing as sexual euphemism.

In the original question of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?", the reason why it's a pin is obviously that pins are very, very small but it was sometimes referred to as well as a question of how many angels could dance on the head of a needle? This was because the detractors of this school of thought were creating puns, so they could call the debate of the question things like a "needless point" in their writings-- very Good Omens-y humorous of them. 😊 We're also now bringing into to conversation via needles and pins language related to the make and repair of clothes-- seamstress work-- as being tied to questions of sex and dancing as sexually euphemistic.

The visuals shown to us during God's monologue include Crowley and Aziraphale dancing separately, in different eras, with other beings-- Aziraphale with some humans and Crowley with some demons-- but with an undertone of sex in both scenes that gets at dancing as sexual euphemism. In Crowley's scene in the 1970s/very early 1980s, he and Hastur and Ligur are in some trippy disco sequence in which they are dancing with a pin but the pin is being used as different kinds of sexual dance-related poles.

This is a visual parallel of the innuendo around seamstress-related language in the series, with a pin-- a tool used by those who make and mend clothes-- being used as a pole, highlighting a (hilariously-presented) aspect of sexuality in dance. Mrs. Sandwich runs a bordello but the coded 19th century-era speech of Aziraphale's magic during The Meeting Ball results in her attempting to describe the sex work menu of her girls as being coded in the language of those who make and mend clothes. This comes from sex workers writing on government forms the 19th century that they were seamstresses to evade authorities (why Mrs. Sandwich says her girls stand on their own two feet "like the government said") and a use of seamstress language as euphemistic for sex that overlapped into coded slang of, in particular, homosexual men.

In one part of the disco sequence, Hastur, Ligur and Crowley are going around the pin like it's a maypole, which were involved in courtship rituals and fertility dances. In another moment, the three of them then turn the pin into a stripper pole and bust out some exotic dancing moves, all less using the pin/pole as prop in a seduction of someone else but more seemingly in place of that someone else, with exactly zero awareness of one another.

What the living fuck is this scene, really? 😂 Is the pin really large? Are they very small? Why can I still not stop laughing at the fact that they aren't dancing on the *head* of a pin but with it? Is Hastur trying to make out with the pole? Did Ligur really invent part of The Macarena decades ahead of its time? What perspective is this scene supposed to be shot from? lol Are we all just assumed high at this point from the disco lights and general trippiness of the sequence? Are any of these the most important questions of this sequence? Not by a long shot lol...

*tilts head* hiiiii Crowley...

What's that? Oh, sorry, right, finishing up the epic journey that is this meta... Yes, yes, sorry. Got distracted by the dancing snake... Which reminds me!

We can't talk about dancing as sexual euphemism without mentioning that the little glimpse into Crowley's bedroom in S1 that we see shows us that he has a wooden figurine of a dancing snake on a table in the corner, which seems like a wink towards Crowley and Aziraphale joking about being like the magician or musician who would play music to "charm" snakes into dancing for them. Crowley kept the dancing snake figurine in his bedroom so that is probably the ultimate in dancing as a sexual euphemism possible and it's another indicator that it's hardly the idea of dancing together being a form of sexual overture that has Crowley so confused when he says "you don't dance" in S2. Dancing, in that sense, is not new to them.

So, God's monologue is winking pretty heavily at dance-as-sexual-euphemism. In showing the dancing this way, God is using dancing to mean both literal dancing (as in, when she describes that Aziraphale is the only angel who dances-as-in-moves-to-music because he learned the gavotte) and also as an answer to the question of whether or not some of the angels and demons have sex. While not all of them do or have interest in doing so-- just like with the humans-- having Crowley and Aziraphale both exhibit a sense of sexuality in the dancing scenes here is more than a little suggestive of the fact that they both do.

So, how does that fit into our whole idea of dancing as it relates to a being a part of society?

Both Crowley and Aziraphale are shown dancing in different situations in different eras in which queer people existing on the fringes of society found a place in which they could express themselves-- but they are very different ways of expression.

Aziraphale learns to dance in a private club for wealthy, gay gentlemen and that is the only place in which he dances because he can do so freely there without too much concern that it will have repercussions for him in both his supernatural and his human worlds. Everyone there in the club is someone who also has a sense of secrecy and a need for discretion in common and they're all well-connected enough to ensure that their privacy remains intact. It's through basically finding a safe space in this club that Aziraphale can have a microcosm of what it would be like to exist more openly in the larger society as a whole.

Crowley, on the other hand?

While Crowley also lived through all of these eras alongside Aziraphale and had the same types of social limitations, we see him dancing openly in the liberation of the disco era. Disco changed everything. It was full of people who had never fit into society and gave voice to, in particular, more female, Black and queer people than ever before. The eventual backlash to disco had nothing to do with the music and everything to do with the changing attitudes about race, gender, sexual orientation, and sex itself at the heart of it.

The difference here is that disco was free to a point that you could dance with anybody. You and your friends could dance, you could dance with someone you wanted to hook up with, you could dance around to it in your house with your family. It didn't matter. While people had long since abandoned the formal rules of dance in mainstream society that existed in the eras of Jane Austen, by the time disco turned up, popular dance had freed itself to being just about self-expression and having fun. It was still sexy but it was no longer playing a formal role in the matchmaking process of people in society. It's about having fun and doing so in the open and much more free.

This is where we're going to look at what your question has to do with the gavotte and Aziraphale's cotillion ball in S2...

The gavotte scene in S1 is one of the most fascinating scenes in the series because nothing else like it exists in terms of how it is filmed. The scene of Aziraphale dancing the gavotte is filmed in such a way as to suggest we are actually watching a video of him doing so. Part of this comes from the lighting, the slightly jumpy 'old time movie' feel of the scene. But, it also comes from the fact that Aziraphale looks directly into the camera at several moments during the scene, in such a way that it makes it feel like he's not looking at *us* in a fourth-wall-breaking sort of way but that he's looking at a camera that exists within The Hundred Guineas Club and is filming them dancing.

This was likely possible at the time, especially in a club patronized by wealthy men. The Lumiere brothers patented the first movie-making cameras in 1895 so it could be argued that Aziraphale and friends are being filmed using a prototype of that technology. (A bit of film-related technology being a bit too early for the time by our human history standards is also shown on Good Omens in S2, when Furfur has a Polaroid camera just under a decade or so too soon, though some prototypes were in development not long after the time Furfur was shown with one.)

The point is that Aziraphale looks like he's letting himself be recorded dancing. Actually, the point is that Aziraphale looks like he is loving letting himself be recorded dancing and that's an enormous thing...

Think back to 1941 for a moment. Crowley and Aziraphale were nearly killed over the picture Furfur took of the two of them together. No audio/visual evidence of the two of them together exists. If they kept the picture, they've hidden it really, really well because they've been terrified of anyone finding them out. Does this recording of Aziraphale still exist, though? Does he have it? Was he going to show Crowley, maybe after everyone left The Meeting Ball?

Living-- existing-- can mean having a record of that existence. That's actually at the heart of the meta I wrote recently about Aziraphale's excitement over getting the Shostakovich record being about having a recording of a performance with history to him and Crowley.

Being a part of the world can mean letting yourself be a documented part of it.

We are shown that, in the late 1880s, Aziraphale let himself be recorded on video dancing with some human friends... which is to say that Aziraphale let himself live.

He let himself find some kindred spirits, learn something new, be an active participant in a group, and enjoy himself. He let all of that be documented and his kind of manic, unbridled joy over all of it is the mark of how rare a thing this level of engagement is for him.

So, why did he?

Why this dance? What does this have to do with The Meeting Ball?

Notice the backdrop of this scene. Other than Aziraphale and the other gentleman and the walls, there is really only one thing of note in the scene and it is in focus for much of the scene: the chandelier.

The gavotte is both a specific kind of dance and a kind of umbrella term for French folk dances from the 16th-18th centuries and a separate, different dance in the 19th century. It was apparently popular in the court of King Louis XIV, whose reign is referred to several times in Good Omens. (Crowley's gauche imitation Louis XIV furniture in his flat in S1; he was king in the time mentioned by Aziraphale in the French scene in S2; his mistress being Madame du Pompadour, historically credited with originating the hairstyle worn by Crowley since prior to Earth's existence, etc....)

Gavotte comes from gavoto, which meant mountaineer's dance or the dance of the mountain people and which, in turn, came from gavot, which meant a boor and a glutton. A boor is a country person or a farmer but it comes from the Latin bovis, meaning a cow or an ox. Etymologically-speaking? Of course this is the dance Aziraphale learned because the gavotte is a French dance of the ox glutton who enjoys a good "mountain" climb.

(The theory that they wrote The Sound of Music lives on. 😂)

Aziraphale learned the gavotte, of all dances, because he knew that Crowley would find the two of them dancing together to this dance in particular very amusing. He learned this dance in the late 1880s, likely with the intent of maybe, someday, being able to dance it with Crowley, which is likely why he was he was annoyed when it went out of style.

Still, we could theorize that one of the reasons why he allowed himself to be filmed dancing it is to have a record of his efforts to learn it-- not just for Crowley but in general-- and that maybe the chandelier in the bookshop is the one from his long-since-closed gentleman's club. It all shows that Aziraphale has wanted to dance, openly and publicly, both in general and with Crowley, for a very long time.

One of the reasons why he likely miracled everyone into 19th century speak during The Meeting Ball and brought down the chandelier and old style dancing was so that he could finally do just that. It isn't so much that Aziraphale needs to stick to old-fashioned dancing in general as it is that he just wanted to have an experience like those of other humans during that time that he wasn't allowed then to have-- by the rules of the human world, not just because of the dangers from his supernatural world.

But it's 2023 in S2 now. Queer people have been able to get married in England for a decade and partnership rights have been around for even longer. Mutt and his spouse's relationship would have been illegal in nine different ways barely a breath ago but they can live openly now. Gabriel has left Heaven and moved into the guest room. Things feel like there's a chance of change everywhere and Aziraphale has just had it and can't take one more night of Crowley slipping out before dawn so this whole "Maggie and Nina" party?

Do you remember how Aziraphale phrased the idea to Crowley?

Cotillion balls aren't just any ball. While cotillion was a style of country dance kind of like the gavotte, a cotillion ball was a coming out ball for young ladies in society. In parts of the world, they still exist, sometimes called now debutante balls.

What's so endearing about Aziraphale fixating on this idea is that a) Maggie and Nina are both women, which is not a match that would have been sanctioned by a cotillion ball in Jane Austen's day, which makes it sweet that Aziraphale is, in a way, trying to give this traditionally romantic idea of love at a dance to a pair of women who would not have had it be an option for them, historically, which is something to which he can relate but also b) Aziraphale is just really semi-consciously using the idea of a party styled after a coming out ball for women in society as his thinly-veiled excuse to have a coming out party of a different kind, of sorts, for himself and Crowley.

Aziraphale isn't closeted in the sense that he's not actively trying to convince anyone that he's straight (good Frances, what a waste of effort that would be lol) but he'd like to be just like everyone else and not have to hide his partner. In the scene where Mrs. Cheng tells him that she and her husband will be at the party, for example, Aziraphale has this kind of wistful look for a moment. He wants that. He'd like to just be chatting with the neighbors and tell them that yes, definitely, he and his husband will be by later on. It's a season of things like Muriel literally opening the door to them hiding in a closet to talk privately and Crowley insisting in the street to Nina that Aziraphale is not his partner but then saying nothing to correct her when she refers to Aziraphale that way when they're in the bookshop. It's Mrs. Sandwich knowing Crowley in part because she sees him slip out the bookshop side door every night but Nina not knowing him in 2.01 because they're hiding the fact that they're a couple so morning coffee is never a thing until it is in S2. The Meeting Ball is Aziraphale taking steps towards them no longer hiding it by having people over when Crowley is there and letting everyone know or assume that Crowley is his partner.

The party is really for Crowley. Having everyone speak outside of time, the theatre curtains, Gabriel circling with trays of food (which was honestly so funny-- The Supreme Archangel walking around all "try an ox rib" to everyone), the vol-au-vents (etymologically linked to nightingales and some of them seemed like they might have been oyster vol-au-vents), etc.. He did it all to dance with Crowley and ask him to stay.

These two are fucking adorable. Look at this angel, I mean, seriously:

Aziraphale has been hitting that since ancient Rome and he's over here, nervous and giddy like he's at his first middle school dance, so fucking excited to ask that dashing ginger currently having an anxiety attack to dance. They have been basically married for millennia and Aziraphale is standing there like I'm going to ask him, I'm going to really do it, I'm going to hold his hand and dance with him in front of everybody and they're all going to know he's mine. We're going to be like everybody else-- just people on Earth.

It's so damn cute.

So, lastly, there's one thing we have to talk about when it comes to dancing and that's the fact that it is a form of self-expression. This is where Aziraphale and his perfectionism come into play a little.

God, in S1, said that not dancing is one of "the distinguishing" features of angels and that Aziraphale, through learning the gavotte, is the only angel who dances (at least, in terms of literally dancing.) This contrasts with the demons, who all dance, though many of them are not particularly good at it. This is the fundamental difference between angels and demons.

The demons are all demons because they were all willing to express themselves as individuals, which is what dancing fundamentally is. The reason why Aziraphale is the only angel who dances in S1 is because the other angels who know how to dance are all now demons.

Dancing means putting yourself out there a bit. You have to be willing to make some mistakes. You have to be willing to look potentially silly in front of other people and learn to not care as much about it. You have to take some chances. You have to engage with others if you want to dance with other people-- so, you have to participate in the world around you a bit. You have to try new things, like hearing new music and learning new ways to move. You have to be your own person, in the sense that you have to have music you like to move to and decide what you'll look like doing that. You have to let yourself take up some space and work hard at shutting off your damn brain enough to enjoy it.

In the 1941, Part 2 scene that we started this meta out with, we saw Aziraphale openly dancing a bit in front of Crowley, a sign of how comfortable he was and is with him. He doesn't have to be perfect around Crowley. Just as Crowley doesn't have to be perfect around him and is willing to look ridiculous to around him, as in the case of The Apology Dance. Being able to be silly and vulnerable is a sign of trust. When you can lean on people you trust and have that kind of intimacy with them, it can make you feel braver to take some risks in the world as a whole. If you let one person in enough and learn how to dance in one or more ways with just them, you'll eventually feel like you can dance free, no matter who is watching.

In the same scene, Aziraphale admits to his conflicts over going to Goldstone's and how he worries that maybe the things in life that he enjoys are "for professional conjurers only"-- for humans only-- with Crowley helping to quiet that imposter syndrome noise in Aziraphale's mind. Crowley's gentleness and the care in his response are examples of why he is who Aziraphale chooses as a partner and why it's with him that he's long-dreamed of having be his dancing partner when he finally is able to publicly dance alongside others at a ball.

Aziraphale is equally considerate in how he treats Crowley and is not put off by spending their first dance in public together essentially trying to calm what he thinks at first is just Crowley's usual level of anxiety talking, knowing Crowley well enough to know that, for all his talk about wanting to live a more open life together, he's as afraid as Aziraphale is. Crowley is dancing anyway. Aziraphale wants to so that's enough for Crowley to do so.

Aziraphale doesn't need some perfectly smooth first dance out together-- though they dance easily and very well together. It doesn't matter how long he's waited. He cares more about trying to reassure Crowley and ease his stress. They actually aren't as safe as Aziraphale believes them to be at this moment but it's the intent that's sweet. He knows this dance is as scary as it is lovely and, as always, it's important to him that Crowley feel safe.

You have to admit that you're a person to dance.

That's what the dancing is all about.

You have to admit that you have a life and to start to accept that you are allowed one. You have to accept yourself as part of a community to publicly dance with a group. You have to feel ready to host the monthly meeting of The Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Association because to do so is to be a participating member in a community and to be a participating member in a community is to be a person living a life on Earth.

It's not surprising, then, that when Aziraphale gets to a point-- a very delicate point but a point, nonetheless-- of feeling like it might be time for him to claim that life for himself, doing so begins with the first night that he's ever been able to be at a party and, just like a zillion other people before him, ask his partner to dance.

[culturalsillystine]

This will be split into two separate posts to save my sanity.

Unfortunately, Zero Day has begun to plague our mind again. Sorry for anyone who doesn't fw the Zero Day posts.

Anyway, I'm someone who personally believes Andre and Calvin wouldn't still be friends if Zero Day hadn't happened. So I decided, for fun, I'd draw my interpretation of what they'd look like if they hadn't gone through with Zero Day, as well as me blabbering about how their lives would be. This post is unfortunately very long, and only focuses on Calvin. Andre will have his own post.

Calvin Gabriel

I personally believe his personal life would get a little (a lot) harder had Zero Day been canceled. I'll elaborate on how I think it'd be stopped in another post but that isn't too important to this, anyway. The only important thing is I think it'd either begin with or lead to some kind of verbal and physical altercation. I don't fully know what would go down, but he'd end up with a broken and permanently crooked nose.

I invision the argument happening after the pipe bomb scene, but before they burn all their belongings. I believe Calvin would take some of the pipe bomb making materials for himself. I haven't decided the exact reason he'd do it yet, but I still think he would. I think he'd make a few things, maybe pipe bombs, but I think he'd stick to smaller explosives. I don't know how explosives work, I'm going to say this now. Maybe it wasn't an explosive he made, maybe it was a firework or something. But I believe he'd be playing around and it would backfire, and he'd get hit in the face. He'd be left with a big ass scar and a fake eye. You might be thinking, hey, if he went to the hospital, they'd cover his mouth, wouldn't they? And yes, they probably would, but I see Calvin as the type of person to not want it covered. I think he'd look at it and think wow, I'm a fucking idiot, I need to look at this every morning to rememher how much of a retard I am. And in some way, it'd remind him of Andre.

(Do I think they'd do this in real life? No, they'd probably take some skin from his leg or something. But this is MY post and NOT yours so I can decide WHATEVER I WANT!!)

(Also, forgive me for the inaccuracy of the scar. I know the anatomy and shaping is probably very wrong.)

I think he'd slowly start to gain weight. Not for one reason or another, he just does. I think it'd he a fairly consistent cycle of gain, lose, gain, lose. He'd grow his hair out because he doesn't like to get haircuts because they ask so many questions about his face, and he doesn't like cutting it himself. There's a scar on his eyebrow from where he gave himself an eyebrow piercing, but it got infected because he didn't clean it properly. He left it in until his body eventually rejected it.

In the picture below, he is 26. He works 11am-7pm at a grocery store. He wears a mask at work and has picked up some ASL to make sure everyone has a chance to understand him. He lived with his parents until he was 23, and at that age he told them he needed help, he felt like he was getting nowhere in life. They helped him get a job and helped him get an apartment. His younger brother is in baseball and he regularly takes him to and from practice. His sister is enrolled in dance classes and is learning piano. He teaches her how to read music. He still feels like he's getting nowhere.

Face close ups.

I will provide close ups for other things, if anyone wants them. Enjoy this, it took me way too long. Or don't. Feel free to send me death threats if you hate it.

[fatallyaddictedtofiction]

My favourite Spn headcanons!

Btw most of these are separate- im a chronic "70 thousand different AUs for like 3 characters" girlie

Hard of Hearing Dean due to the amount of guns he's been shooting since being a kid. This is why they use silent signals when staking out places, because Dean couldn't hear the whispers.

Following on from that point, that's why Sam knows some ASL, because Dean and Sam learned as kids when Sam noticed Dean was struggling to hear especially on his right ear, and every so often Dean would teach Sam a sign that didn't mean what it actually meant (eg fuck instead of thanks)

Transfem Sam: the allegory of demon blood and feeling inherently wrong and out of place in your own body, feeling evil for not being "normal", running away to get away from John's disappointment (at this point in time Dean didnt know he was a boy so he thought he had no sons but then;

Transmasc Dean: trying to prove to his dad that he's worth it by becoming him (and overly masculine to compensate) unhealthy binding at first but when John finds out he gets Dean something decent (only because Dean can't hunt or protect Sammy if his ribs are crushed)

Following on from those, they swap clothes all the time and because Dean is smaller the clothes are big, comfy and euphoria inducing, and with Sam theyre a little tighter and she likes how it fits. John doesn't comment on it usually but occasionally grimaces when they're painting their nails together

Angels actually grow up, so Chuck had to actually raise them, but once Michael and Lucifer were around 16/15 (in cosmic aeons ofc) he relegated those duties to them to raise Uriel & Gabriel, then the others including Cas. For special cases like Naomi, Chuck raised her himself

The angels' true forms have "cores" that represent some aspect of them. Michael has a something similar to a sun or star, Naomi has liquid mercury, Castiel has a stormy ocean, Anna has spores/leaf-like things

The angel siblings betted on which dinosaur would last the longest, then Chuck thought they were getting too sentimental and sent the asteroid down

Dean hates orange juice because they couldn't afford it as kids but tried to always get it because that was Sam's favourite (Dean likes apple juice more because it looks like whiskey)

Jo, Dean and Sam used to play together as little kids, then they forgot about each other as the years went by and it broke Ellen's heart to see the boys still hunting after all those years of not seeing them

As a kid, Dean wrote letters to Mary, and left them on the nightstand of whatever motel they were staying in. John reads them and cries so hard. He always keeps them in his jacket as a reminder of what he made his kids lose and when Dean asks where they went John tries not to cry and says "i posted them, she'll read them. Dont worry". The day Dean stopped writing letters was the day John hit Dean for the first time.

Dean is dyslexic, but still helped Sam do his homework as much as he could. Because Dean mainly taught Sam how to read and write, Sam sometimes gets stuff wrong until he learns the right way at school, then comes home and teaches Dean. Dean pretends to be grumpy but hes actually really proud & grateful

Sam has a favourite stuffed toy that he still keeps with him to this day. Its a really beat up dog with floppy ears that he's never washed because he's scared it will fall apart

Cas practices Dean's (and others) mannerisms while he isn't with them so he feels like hes scaring them less (Dean finds it adorable but sad that Cas feels like he has to)

Sapphic Dean and Cas

After they save the world and theyre ALL alive and happy, Jack de-ages to around 12 and goes to school, Cas becomes a grief counsellor, Sam becomes a teacher, Dean needs more time to adjust, but eventually he and Eileen go into social working with kids

Jody and Donna are together and adopted Claire Alex & Patience.

Dean asks Jody for advice on rearing Jack the 12-year-old but Donna is of more use in that situation as Jody didn't get to raise her son to that age and the girls were past that, and Donna was around for her niece growing up so she texts Dean advice all the time

Cas likes to draw, and he ends up drawing Dean a lot ("still beautiful, still Dean Winchester")

[familyagrestefanblog]

Throwing a disclaimer out because I think it's time I say it again just to be sure:

Me having fallen so much out of love with Marinette by now isn't because I hate that her side of the conflicts was given more weight than Adrien's or that I "don't understand that she's the main character"

My problem lies in HYPOCRISY. Marinette's writing ever since season 4 has been going out of its way to be as hypocritical as possible in basically every aspect of the story, but especially the love square, and then it was sold as "justified and totally morally sound feminism" just because it's a girl doing it.

The amount of harmful messages Maribug was retooled into teaching as "empowerment" without any genuine accountability on her part - beside some vagueness sometimes that stops meaning anything the next moment it actually matters - are insane and inherently on child abuse victims expense to the point where I don't actually trust alot of Marinette stans opinions on child abuse and leadership anymore which is the worst thing Marinette's character could have been made to cause.

I hate that sexist HYPOCRISY was declared EMPOWERING as long as the girl benefits from it. I stand under no obligation to support a harmfully hypocritical main character of a female empowerment kids cartoon, and if you think I do, learn what actual feminism is.

I repeat: my problem lies in the deeply interwoven and glorified hypocrisy

NOT in the fact that Marinette's side of the narrative was covered at all.

I was and AM perfectly fine and supportive of that, but what I don't support is the show ever since season 4 hardcore retooling the narrative into ONLY Marinette's side and benefit mattering and in some of the worst and most hypocritical ways possible to the point where Marinette never even made a single effort in finding Hawkmoth to actually DO HER JOB and take a fraction of interest in the man underneath his mask because that wouldn't have been about HERSELF.

Years ago, 2x01 "The collector" promised me a main character who will actually show initiative to end the war in more regards than herself first and foremost becoming the Queen of the world. I signed up for Marinette as main character who will actually SAVE Gabriel's victims with her compassion and drive to help people

I didn't get that beyond the most surface level way possible because Marinette and the narrative were written to prioritizing her being entirely in control of everything, girlbossing her love interest into being her submissive care taker for which she hardly took any accountability for, and looking cool hitting stuff including her love interest and the remains of her Villain's wife who never wanted this, but Marinette threw a fucking LIFT on her body to get a strategic advantage over Gabriel by taking advantage of Gabriel's remaining humanity and love for the very woman at the core of all this.

Emilie, who was fridged and silenced beyond anything resembling to feminism, but it HAD to happen because Emilie's story isn't about Marinette and the narrative had to make sure Marinette will be celebrated "as such a cool girlboss!" for throwing a fucking LIFT on the remains of the villain's loved one while she simultaneously failed Emilie's son - Marinette's own "partner" - so MUCH as partner and leader that he had literally no way to possibly make it out of this partnership because Marinette teached Chat Noir that she's all that matters, he gets no support, help, resources, or a voice when it isn't to her benefit.

When the chips are down, he has to die quietly and give up his ring because Ladybug couldn't be asked to look beyond her personal experience, benefit and comfort in this "partnership" while simultaneously needing to be taken care of, as good as worshipped, and celebrated by him like a mind reader for EVERYTHING because she wasn't "ill-intentioned"

Which she is explicitly written to prioritize people understanding that about her than actually working on herself in ways that truly matter.

I once signed up for Marinette being the main hero and savior of Paris and Gabriel's victims, but all I got is glorified hypocrisy thats sold as "empowerment" and a worshipped girlboss main heroine who postponed doing her job so fucking much that the main villain shaped the entire in-universe world already BEFORE he won and made his wish, as well as several characters being damned and irreversibly negatively affected by his power and influence over and on them by the time Marinette was finally spoon-feed into being able to face Hawkmoth at literally 11:59 pm.

But hey, I suppose all that mattered was Marinette BENEFITTING from that to sweep her own big flaws under the rug, as well as her looking cool hitting stuff in different super hero suits to she can become the Queen of the world.

I would apologize for having thought that Marinette's hero's journey was about more than that, but that's literally nothing I have to apologize for.

[knightofthesevenfandoms]

Now that you've watched s2, I'm very curious to hear your opinion about it as an honourable IB shipper

My feelings are very mixed, while their flashbacks were pretty cute, the "confession" scene felt TERRIBLE to me. Why would these two old bureaucrats sing a cheesy song at each other in front of their respective courts 😭 Why were they speaking like 13 year olds. The ending just ruined the relationship becoming canon :(

Really long answer incoming lol.

Okay so. Essentially, yes. It was jarring/cringe because it was so VASTLY different than the vibe of their relationship that I had built in my head the last four years. I've always thought of them quite a bit more mature, sometimes combative, and really fucking kinky. But I wouldn't say it ruined it for me, and I'll explain why.

Initially it seemed SO out of character, the lovey-dovey, almost childlike affection they had for each other. But it's exciting for me to consider what if this WAS in their characters all along, they were just never given the opportunity/felt safe enough to let that side of their personalities be seen. Which is HEARTBREAKING but there's some subtle evidence to back this up.

We all know Bee is an angry, annoyed, high ranking demon with a lot on their plate. Even Crowley said "because they're always such a ray of sunshine" to Shax because it seems common knowledge to all of Hell that Bee is, well... an angry little shit. But they ARE a ray of sunshine when they're with Gabe, away from hell, away from their daily stresses, away from the expectations of running Hell. LOOK AT THEM.

We saw a hint of this in S1, when they showed a moment of vulnerability. When? In front of Gabe, at the airbase. They can't show weakness in Hell because they can't weaken their position as Prince (Grand Duke?), but Gabriel is the only other being in the entire cosmos they feel is an equal, and they can therefore let their guard down like they did at the airbase, and like they do a little bit more at every meeting with Gabe following Armageddon. Until they were actually showing the real Bee- who is a little unsure, kind of quiet, and a worrier. I always headcanoned that Bee absolutely WAS soft, underneath all their posturing, but only ever in private and only ever with Gabe. AND THEN I WAS GIVEN THAT HOLY SHIT.

Okay now on to Gabe. I always headcanoned that after Armageddon, he fucking broke. He snapped. He was SO TIRED of working toward goals, leading the host of Heaven toward said goals, and then the biggest one of all ended up a failure and essentially it fell on his shoulders. And that's basically what did happen in canon! It started, just like it did for Bee, at the airbase, when it was all falling apart, he turned to the only being he could that would understand his frustration.

He was always the hard-ass boss, albeit an idiot and a dick, but the memory wipe proved there was a sweetheart in there somewhere. Before the season aired, I assumed the memory wipe was what would show Gabe the error of his ways, and he would learn to be gentle and generous and loving through that trial. But it turns out HE ALREADY LEARNED IT BY THE TIME OF THE MEMORY WIPE.

Heaven seems so cold and lonely, and my god the scene where he says no one had ever given him anything. My heart ached for him. Heaven didn't even give him a desk. MURIEL, a 37th order, was given a desk but he wasn't. Away from the cold sterility of Heaven and his obligations, he heard Bee say they liked something, and he realized how happy their enjoyment made him. So he decided he liked it too. He never got to enjoy things (other than clothes), or his time around others, and Bee provided him that escape, simply by saying "I like this song." And then he miracled the song to play because he wanted to make someone, other than himself, happy. And he was ready to swan dive into Hell, give up the clothes he loved, because he knew he'd be okay, he and Bee would be okay if they were together.

Yes, their relationship is way different than I pictured it would be. But I'm framing it instead of being ooc, maybe we weren't seeing the real Gabe and Bee in S1. We were just seeing them as the result of their respective situations.

And the confession, to me, was used as a juxtaposition for the husbands confession, which uh. Did not go nearly as well.

So yeah, the singing to each other and their soft, innocent affection was cringe. But Bureaucracy has always been cringe, Bee is a gremlin and Gabe is an idiot. I'm looking forward to exploring their new dynamic in fic, and maybe filling some of the gaps that took them from where they were to where they are now.

[ilikekidsshows]

Sorry for jumpin your ask box like this. Marinette stans are... a pest to say the least and I wanna rant here because this seems to be like a save space. When I say it here my frustration can't cause trouble for me or anyone else.

I don't care anymore if people say I'm just a stupid salter who hates Marinette, I don't think this show will ever be able to undo the absolute fucking hypocrisy that is Marinette de-transforming and trusting an as good as defeated Gabriel like an absolute damn MORON

When 6 episodes earlier Adrien had to apologize in shame for 'having caused Marinette's disadvantage' against Lila in the class when HE literally still doesn't even know about what happened in the damn bathroom, but Marinette for damn sure KNOWS that Gabriel is an insane and sadistic abuser and terrorist!

And of course Marinette fans are bending over BACKWARDS to talk their way outta acknowledging any kinda truth one could be upset about. Saying that it's not the same cause Marinette is 14 (like Adrien and everyone else, too??!) and is, like, the purest and most wonderful but horrifically abused and misunderstood person who ever existed and that Gabriel not having taken Marinette's generous (empty) offer was totally just Gabriel betraying her pure and angelic heart that tried to do the right thing like the hero she is because 'she's so pure that she was able to see the good in him and wanted to give him another chance 😌'

When, what the hell?? Adrien was and IS being ripped to SHREDS for so much less cause of Chameleon! Just because Marinette couldn't ever confront Lila in a way that goes beyond "point finger and scream and then get upset when that doesn't work for 5 seasons straight"! There is NOTHING anyone can claim that makes the hypocrisy here make sense. Nothing. Didn't she just 'lovingly' patronize Adrien by saying that "sometimes the good we see in other people is only a reflection of our own goodness" and he had to act grateful that she's still able to love him despite his naivety and wrongness?? That was 6 episodes ago! Marinette, where did that energy go now that it's YOU?

Adrien had to 'learn his lesson' in shame and be reprimanded for a good moral advice he couldn't possibly know would backfire because he unknowingly said it about the show's most evil psychopath apparently

But Marinette can seemingly be the most gullible, hypocritical, and illogical moron on the planet, detransforming for no god damn reason in front of the not entirely disarmed and dying mass terrorist, abuser, and magical enslaver who's about to fail and loose everything he ever loved and fought for

But SURE, she totally didn't do Adrien's 'offense' from season 3 just 1000x WORSE, cause, didn't you know? It's ✨Marinette!✨

Her flaws don't matter. In fact, anyone who says she is capable of REAL flaws apparently just mindlessly hates her and strong female characters like her. She can do everything everyone else gets dragged to hell for cuz fuck everyone and everything I guess! Mademoiselle center of the universe might be sad if morality applies to her.

At least if they'd SAY IT that they are okay with pathetic double standards and hypocrisy, but no. Everyone is acting like they're on the moral high-horse by just ignoring everythin that doesn't make Marinette look like the greatest person ever, because it's ✨Marinette✨and we're just mean haters who "don't get it". I sure get that Marinette's fans' and especially STANS' words have lost as good as all validity in my eyes starting with the retooling season 4 because of how incapable of basic self-reflection they seem to be!

btw, I didn't talk to them in this tone. I just wanted to have a conversation with people who say that they think the Marinette and Adrien situations are different and I get nothin but unfiltered hypocrisy and excuses upon excuses! It's just "Adrien was WRONG because Marinette was RIGHT!" with "Marinette was RIGHT but Gabriel was such an awful person to HER that he unfairly punished her pure heart of justice™! 🥺"

Like, get the hell out man. How is any discours supposed to ever exist again after all this??

I apologize again for intruding, I needed to get this off my chest. I still wish you a great day and thanks for providing a place for group therapy 😅

---

Marinette stans love to claim that any consequences for her actions is Marinette being “punished”. They’ve been crying and throwing up about “Marinette getting punished for things that aren't her fault” ever since the original pre-retool series. Even when there's no character to point an accusing finger at, they claim that the writers are punishing her whenever she doesn't get away with something scot free or gets minorly inconvenienced by anything. The idea that Marinette having anything less than a perfect day with every character worshiping her is the same as her getting “punished” has been the basic toxic Marinette stan’s creed for years.

I'm also just going to be really mean: all of Marinette’s good traits that the stans repeat are wildly exaggerated from traits every non-villainous character has. Because, if we take their claims literally, I certainly don't see this “pure heart of justice” and “always helping others” the stans claim she does, because she's too busy moping about or chasing Adrien whenever she's on screen to have the time to help people as much as her stans claim she does. She sometimes helps her friends and family and she saves Akuma victims cause that's her job, but so much more of her life is taken up by worrying about herself.

She's also not strong, physically or mentally. She is not secretly jacked and she has never gotten out of a stressful situation victorious without someone else there to prop her up first. In terms of these things, Marinette is average, “just a normal girl with a normal life”. Marinette isn't weak exactly, but any other “good” member of the cast is the same. She’s not exceptional in these things, but the stans love to claim she’s the greatest, purest, goodest thing that was ever spawned into existence in the world of Miraculous. I know the phrase “strong female character” lost any meaning long ago, but it’s kinda laughable we’re at the point where explicit failures like the season 5 finale are being touted around as signs of strength.

I also agree that the Miraculous fandom just can't handle discourse anymore. Some time ago I saw a post that had someone wondering why there weren't many new analysis posts in the fandom post-season 5 and the reason for that is that the fandom doesn't have space for that kind of analytical thinking anymore. The analysts saw what SentiAdrien would do to the series and, when the fandom exploded into the expected abuse apologia, they left. In addition to that the series can no longer withstand any kind of analytical viewing so the remaining, highly defensive fandom is against questioning what they're watching. You can't enjoy this show if you employ any kind of critical thinking, because the morals the writers elevate are rancid.

Marinette stans have always been like this. I've never been harrassed by Chloé stans and I used to post some very spicy stuff about Chloé. Every time I've been harrassed in this fandom, it was done by Marinette stans. The more toxic Marinette stans have always been the worst part of this fandom and now that the writers are pandering to them, they're really bold about pushing everyone else around.

[whore-ibly-hot]

Heya, hope you're doing well. I was wondering on the yans with a body conscious darling? Specifically with their tummy and thighs, totally not feeling body conscious myself lol.

Thank you! (Also may I be 💍 anon? :0)

ARRRRAARAR I LOVE THIS ASK

As a bigger girl myself, I am no stranger to being body self conscious. While I am on a really successful weight loss journey right now, my thighs and tummy are my most embarrassing areas in my mind. I'm happy to make an short piece based on this, 💍 anon!

First and foremost, there are two stand out yanderes who love your tummy and thighs. This would be Joey and Fritz. Joey's town is old fashioned, and Fritz is literally in the olden days. Back then, wide hips were seen as a sign a lady could carry a child easier and bear more. Since both Joey and Fritz crave a family, the adore it. Upon learning you are self conscious, they would bathe you in compliments, and whether or not it removes the anxiety it does feel nice.

The Mean-girls, or at least Maggie, have unending confidence. Because of this, they don't really know how to make you feel hot. They've always either told themselves they were gorgeous, or told losers at school they weren't. So, Maggie and Sasha would take you shopping, in an attempt to retail therapy the sadness away. This happens to be Sasha's favorite pass time. Meanwhile, Lindsey would be trying to figure out what conscious meant.

Ahmed would go the route of showering you in compliments about your body, but mostly just tries to make you feel better by putting himself down. You feel ugly? Don't worry, your a godess, it's a lowly worm like him who's the disgusting one. Patrick would just try to plow you, telling you the nastiest things he can think of pertaining to the parts that make you upset. Telling you to get used to loving your stomach because it will swell much bigger when he fucks you full of his seed, or how he wants you to trap his head between your thighs.

Mattias would be gentle, and kind. As I mentioned, he craves physical touch from you, and loves using your body as a pillow. He would explain in more than just compliments, but rather a speech about how beautiful you are to him. He would also offer to go to the gym with you, and teach you how to use some of the machines there, if only so he can see you in workout clothes.

A thicker woman was seen as beautiful in ancient Athens, so Puck would be very confused as to why you didn't think you were beautiful. He would take you to see human statues and paintings of beautiful women, to show you the similarities in your figure and there's.

Carl would definitely take a similar approach to Patrick, and try and fuck the negative thoughts out of your mind. He'd also be more possesive, telling you not to think bad things about HIS possessions, his girls tummy, his girls thighs.

Gabriel wouldn't be the kindest about it, telling you to not worry about vanity, and to not insult your appearance, as his God made you in his image. Joshua wouldn't say anything, to stubborn to compliment you the way he wished. Instead, the few times you both cuddle he would silently pay more attention to those area.

Last but not least, Johannes is to awkward to voice how he feels, so he would do whatever Fritz told him to...

[tarjapearce]

A thought on Miguel

Ya know? Every time I see Miguel I think.

Man, this man needs a hug even if he says that's he's fine cause we know he's just bulshitting himself big time. Like, he's broken, his life was shit and the little thing that actually made him happy disappeared in his hands before his eyes.

Sometimes I think that Gabriela was that inflection point where he just realizes "Maybe  just maybe I can try happiness." (Cause c'mon. In the comics dude is abused emotionally by his own mother. Always comparing him and belittling him. And we know what happened to Gabriel. and his step dad is shit. )

Sometimes I like to think that Gabriela was his redemption to all those terrible bad years prior the incident. She was his purpose. And when he saw the chance, he didn't even hesitated into dive head first into it. His biggest mistake. Although pretty much understandable. None would overlook the chance of being better or happy or do things differently, right?

Sometimes I think He just wanted to be the father he never had. He just wanted to be the role model he never had, be that safe place for someone else that he never got. And that's why I think most of us empathize with him. Mostly for not saying all of us, (Kudos if you don't ♥️) have had situations that resembled Comic Miguel and Movie Miguel's life.

And when he loses Gabi, that's a turning point for the bad to him. His main motivation to be better, happier is gone.

Instead, he kinda twists that purpose Gabi gave him to protect the Multiverse he knows. Not that he doesn't care for the Spider Society members. He knows that all of them are there because they are more capable of handling themselves. They don't need protection, but they do need a role model, someone that guides them into not fucking up like he did.

That's why he is all grumpy, tired, emotionally drained and mentally exhausted. Cause he learned the consequences the hard way, but the rest is just cool about it. (Not cool in the 'I don't care way' but more like Just 'tell me what you need me to do and I'll do it, but my way' sort of thing.)

He didn't have the proper time to actually reflect on his mistakes, not that the multiverse is giving him any break though, He is Spiderman. He just knows that his mistake CANNOT be repeated. That's why he turns even more irritable, angry, fearful, all stemmed from self loathing for failing.

The man is depressed af. And we know, he overworks himself, he berates his own mind by watching over and over the screening videos of him and Gabi, he perpetuates guilt, but he cannot waver, cause he is a role model (A self imposed one) for the rest. He's not yet he is a martyr. He's not because he shares the common goal to keep Multiverse safe, but he is since said need to keep multiverse safe rooted from his big fuck up.

But dude has a savior complex. (I think this one suits better than martyr, dunno.)

And when Miles show up and does his thing, he sees all his convictions, motivations, his purpose, everything that drives him, threatened. And that's why lashed out the way he did on Miles.

That's his breaking point. I do not agree in the things he said to Miles though, we all know that he was just self projecting big time a good chunk of that dialogue. But he just wants to contain Miles at first, but the more Miles fights, the more everything he has worked for crumbles. An act of despair and fear disguised as anger, I like to think.

He is stunned cause damn, the menace to everything he has known and built so far just escaped from his hands before his eyes and again he was unable to stop it. (Another failure for him.)

He's a walking contradiction. Mistakes for him are not an option, but he can't help but make them along the way. Like most of us. And I think that's what makes him the most human among other Spiderman. And hopefully we can see more of him and how does he deals with all of that in the last movie.

But yeah, that's just my take on him.. Might be wrong, might be 🤡 or obvious but yeah. Needed to get that out.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

pt IX good omens on livestream, i'm not ok: S1E4

You did it, Good Omens fandom, my dear maggots. You broke me in every way. Now I'm here, and where I once spent my day peacefully being sad about normal things, I'm now sad about a random fact about nightingales I learned on a British ornithology site and this is just... the brainrot. It's real. Raise brainrot awareness. Prevention is better than the nonexistent cure.

Well, I've procrastinated this post by like 48 hours by drawing fanart and being mopey over Crowley and generally being asleep because I'm still on antibiotics and ill. So let us not procrastinate further. First, episode 4. Tally, hoes!

In preparation for the stream, I gathered two emotional support oranges, only one of which was gaseous, and an apple. This was so that rather than waste an orange on being gay for Crowley I'd use the apple for that, symbolic of his temptation in the Garden of Eden etc. I didn't know how badly this plan would go.

On Discord, our collective loins girded, I noticed with no small suspicion that everyone was muttering about the bookshop and whether I'd be okay. When I demanded frantically what happened to the bookshop (I THOUGHT EVERYTHING WAS IN S2) everyone shut up and told me the bookshop was in tiptop shape and it was all tickety-boo and nothing would happen at all in episode 5.

Spoiler alert it is not all tickety-boo.

We start with Aziraphale going for a jog to keep uh fit for exercising with Crowley, and he is interrupted by Gabriel, who is not Jimbriel, and is not naked, that is, we cannot see his arse yet, but we can see that he is an arse.

We then see not-Newt the deliveryman with his wife Maude and they are the only straight couple that the people on the chat care about. Calling him not-Newt is going to pose problems for me.

Crowley is being a smart baby, and researching astronomy. Poor Crowley. I love Crowley. Do you understand? I LOVE CROWLEY.

There is a lot of talk of spoons and forks and such innuendos. I make a joke about scissors being missing. The chat does not notice. I am disappointed in the gays.

I am so engrossed in the way Death says "deeAaaAAthHHhh" that I fail to notice Not-Newt get killed delivering a message to Death. This is going to pose problems for me.

I forgot about the apocalypse plotline till the horsepeople arrive. This is understandable. I care not for this 'world' ending, my new world is Crowley. I love Crowley.

Duck aliens fucking descend. This is not a joke. There are duck aliens, and they are supportive of trans people. Newt does not count their nipples.

The Shad guy doesn't care Newt found aliens. He is upset that Newt didn't find witches. If Shad was mowing his lawn and found gold, he would toss it aside because he is focused on mowing. I can respect that. People make jokes about Newt eventually finding a witch.

It is suddenly a Christopher Nolan movie. Someone corrects me and says it's more like Jerry Bruckheimer. I do not know what that is.

Someone says Crowley destroys the Bentley but for whatever reason, like a lot of people before, makes it a black box that you have to click to read. I don't mind that, I like clicking.

Aziraphale bought out a theatre for Crowley, like a Kdrama where the rich CEO buys out an entire theatre for his working class girl.

Adam goes through what I went through with OCD. It is not fun.

It is now a horror movie. Adam floats in the air. That was not a symptom I had with OCD.

Crowley asks Aziraphale to run away with him to the stars. Aziraphale says no. Crowley is upset and my baby Azi looks so sad and confused about everything he believes in. Great. I'm totally fine, I think as I start stuffing my emotional support orange into my mouth.

It is now a Home Alone movie. Crowley in gloves is sexy. Mmmmmmm yes. Crowley does great advertising for plant spray bottles as he murders and threatens demons.

I point out that the GO book says Crowley can do "weird things with his tongue" as I learned from the GO scent guide company page. It was after all the most relevant take-away from that page.

Disco Tony arrives. This is not a safe space.

AZIRAPHALE KEEPS TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND IS FAILED BY HEAVEN LEAVE MY BABY AZI ALONE WTF GO AWAY. THE ANGELS WALL SLAM HIM TOO. THAT'S CROWLEY'S THING YOU BASTARDS.

Newt and Anathema are cute. I DON'T NOTICE BECAUSE IM SO UPSET HE'S CHEATING ON MAUDE AND WONDERING WHY THE CHAT IS OKAY WITH IT BECAUSE I AM A FOOL WHO CONTINUES TO MIX UP NEWT WITH NOT-NEWT AND THEN THE CHAT TELLS ME NOT-NEWT DIED AND I'M CONFUSED.

Newt and Anathema are having sex. As an aspec person, I am very alarmed at the visuals.

Azi is failed by heaven and the metatron. Shocker. Fucking get away from Azi. Azi is miserable and looks like he wants to cry.

AZI IS EXORCISED AND THE FUCKING FLAME CATCHES IN THE BOOKSHOP AND THE EPISODE ENDS.

TAKE MY PAIN MOTHERFUCKERS. I WILL POST THIS AND THEN WRITE THE EP5 PART.

[wisteriasymphony]

MORE FUCKING SAMAU LETS GOOOO

Gabriel feared having to tell Adrien he was going to die tomorrow. He'd never been a good father, and that was never by choice. After being told of the situation, Gabriel supposed he wasn't even Adrien's father at all. Despite being three feet taller, despite having white hair and wrinkles... the 'father' and 'son' had been born the very same day, completely separate from each other.

The lack of resemblance had given it away from the very start, he supposed.

They sit in the dark, because the powers that be tend to have more control when things are lit. Gabriel worked to create a meal for Adrien—a real meal, one with steak and potatoes and not a few flimsy pancakes topped with banana. Gabriel had found that meal to be a disgrace, even when he was making it. But his arms had moved on their own.

Adrien kept glancing between the meal and the stranger in front of him. He was surprised he had ever even tried to kill Gabriel, in all honestly—the rage felt ridiculous now. They're not even really related, just like how Adrien and Emilie weren't even really related. ...How does one really become related to another? Adrien cannot and will never be able to comprehend it. His brain isn't suited to conceptualize things like childbirth or marriage licenses—Nobody in his world was written that way.

Adrien pokes at his steak again, taking another piece into his mouth. It takes like sand. ...He doesn't know what sand tastes like, barely knows how it feels. Beaches, if he's ever been to one, feel the same as grass and wood and sidewalk concrete.

"Your cataclysm arm is getting worse," Adrien jokes, rather dryly.

Gabriel can't respond. It hurts that he'll eventually have to.

"...Well, I suppose I won't be worried about it for long. Tomorrow, I'm..."

Gabriel breathes in, unable to feel the air fill the hollow of his chest.

"...Something's wrapping up, Adrien. I'm going with it."

"You're leaving?"

"I suppose I have to," Gabriel laments. "You're giving up your ring tomorrow, right?"

Adrien tries to remember what he'd been told—Not by a voice or through written text, but merely by gut feelings.

"...Yes," he grimaces. He can't see his ring but knows that it's there. "Good riddance."

"All I know so far is that I will try and make the wish, and then I'm gone. Forever." To lighten his own spirits, Gabriel laughs and adds "Maybe they'll send me to New York, too. I'll keep an eye on Chloe while I'm there."

Adrien could only hope that Chloe was somewhere safe, 'New York' or not. As far as he knew, he'd never see her again. Even if her being his childhood friend meant nothing if he never had a childhood... he knew she must been alone there. He knew someone out there had been lying.

"Where's Nathalie?" Adrien asks, hoping to redirect the conversation.

"Asleep." Gabriel takes a bite of potato, chewing silently. "I told her earlier, don't worry. She has her own things to do tomorrow."

If anything, Nathalie is more of Adrien's mother than Emilie ever got the chance to be. Adrien's stomach turns and twists at the notion. He stabs the steak with his fork, using a little more force than he has to.

"Do you think it's possible to love someone you never really knew?"

Gabriel is caught off guard by the question, but he's been plagued by it ever since he learned the truth. Adrien asks it like he's asking someone his own age, which is right. Gabriel is no adult, Gabriel has no answers.

"I don't know, Adrien," he responds. His son—whatever that word even means—isn't happy with this answer.

"I just don't know why you didn't tell me," he grumbles. "Why you didn't ask from the very start if I'd be okay with any of this." It's not even close to what he was wondering, but Adrien pretends the contrary. "I just don't know why I wasn't allowed to be let in on any secret. Why was I chosen as the last person in the world to trust?"

Gabriel remembers having to watch himself akumatize his son not once, but twice. He wants to protest, tell this stranger in front of him that he wasn't even able to think about telling him anything, and that every step closer to death could only bring him comfort in the sense that he would no longer be forced to watch himself hurt and lie, because now he had to think and he had to know it was wrong, and...

"We've all been trapped in our decisions, Adrien," was all he could bring himself to say. "...I'm not really your father, nor will I ever be. But if I was, and if things were different..."

He can't see Adrien in the dark. Can't see himself.

"...I want to believe that I would've told you. At the very least, I would've told you."

[cherryberry-sugarandspice]

Taming the Bull - Another snippet

A/N: the fic won't be started until I finish my nanny one. but wanted to say the reader will be chubby, because we need more miguel x chubby!reader blessss and miguel will be saying stupid shit thinking he's being romantic and kind but in reality it's actually fucking rude Also reader won't be like one of the curvy girls with hips and hour glass shaped. She's gonna have a bigger belly, back fat (big back), hip dips, hella rolls, slimmer legs/thighs, etc. Basically her upper body is bigger than her lower. It's similar to my body shape tbh WARNING reader is hella insecure of her body (yes I will be projecting in this fic but reader will eventually learn to love herself on her own and not because she's received love from miguel and gabriel)

Miguel holds you close to him, dark eyes peering into your trembling ones. His knuckles brush along your cheek and you move your head away, gulping.

"I just don't get it," you whisper, attempting to push yourself off of him but his grip grows tighter. He's tilts his head with a brow raised, humming in question at your response.

"Why me?" you ask him, unable to meet his gaze. "It's just, there's so many other girls you can and have been with. I'm nothing special. My body is...nothing special." Your cheeks burn in shame at saying that, but you can't picture yourself being with someone like Miguel.

Or basically picturing Miguel with someone like you.

It hurts, but you've gone your entire life with no affection from anyone. No one has perceived you in a romantic way and you know it's because they see your body first before your heart.

Miguel sighs, pursing his lips. He's heard that so many times from you, and it's beginning to frustrate him. He's wanted you for so long. Why can't you believe that he wants you? He loosens his hold on you and cups your cheek, having you look back up at him.

"Hey," he says softly, expression turning soft. "Don't say such things about yourself. You are beautiful, gordita, inside and out." He presses a kiss into your hairline. "I hate it when you talk about yourself like that. If only you can see yourself from my eyes."

A shiver runs down your spine and you inch forward against him, gulping. "I wish I could too, but it's impossible. I just...I don't know," you sigh in defeat.

"I understand you're insecure, but you can't let that stop from what good can come out from this. From us," he says. He takes your hands in his, squeezing them. "Don't let your insecurities hold you back. Not from us. Not from anything. You deserve to be happy, gordita."

"I'm just not used to things like this," you say.

"Then let me help you get used to it," he encourages. He gets closer to your face, hot breath fanning across your skin. "Let me show you how much you mean to me."

"But wouldn't you want someone with a perfect body? Someone who isn't like me," you say, eyes dropping down to his lips. You can't help but say those things. All your life, you were hated for the shape of your body. As much as you've tried to fight against your insecurities and the scrutiny of others, you just can't help it.

"I don't want someone with a perfect body. I want yours," he whispers, about to close the gap. "Besides, you're not fat, you're absolutely beautiful."

"What?" You pull your head back, frowning. You didn't say you were ugly.

"I said you're beautiful, babe," he winks. "Besides, why would I want a perfect body when I can have yours?" He tries to close the gap again, but you take a step back.

"That's not the fucking compliment you think it is."

Miguel blinks, caught off guard by your sudden shift in mood. "I didn't mean anything bad. I'm just saying I don't want a perfect body."

"Fuck you, get out of my apartment."

"Gordita, wait-"

"Just get out!"

[thatsthewrongwallcraig]

Epilogue: Belize

Summary: About 1 year later the world very much seems to be a different one…

Pairing: Gabriel x nurse!Fem!Reader

Content Warnings: Just Fluff

A/N: Thank you all for sticking with me on this one! 🖤🫶🏻

Find the entire Crybaby-Miniseries here!

Tagging the horny horde:

@crypticsewerslut @quicksilversg1rl @cc-luvr @icarus-star @milaeth @roryculkinsgf @spookyorchid @arch1viste @whoareyoi @angelsanarchy @blueberrypancakesworld @rocketqueen-world @lifelessvessel @doddernix @svgarcaine @amayalul @basementgrl222 @kristennero-wallacewellsver @iiheartsai @fan-goddess @shady-the-simp

I will not ask you where you came from

I will not ask you, neither should you

Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips

We should just kiss like real people do

- Like Real People Do By Hozier

The soft sounds of waves crashing against the shore filled your ears as you were about to take another sip from a straw ending in a cut-open coconut. The fresh taste filled your mouth before you gulped the liquid down, sitting straight up again to allow your eyes to roam over the shoreline. A nearly violently bright blue pair of shorts caught your attention and a wide, satisfied grin tugged at your mouth whilst watching Gabriel play around in the water.

About 3 months ago, right after the two of you had somehow managed to bail, swindle and cheat Gabe out of that damned hellhole of an institution, you had decided on selling everything and by everything you had, in fact, meant everything. From your apartment to your car and to the last DVD out of your very preciously cultivated collection. All of it went into two one-way-tickets to Belize and a stay at a cozy, little BnB until you had your stuff figured out.

Getting a job in Belize City thankfully hadn't been too hard on you and instead of mint-coloured scrubs and sneaky linoleum floor you now took care of senior citizens in an adorable retirement home close to the beach.

For the first time in your life, you had learned to acknowledge the little thing, the tiny, minuscule happenings and surroundings. For the first time, you really felt the warm sun shining down on your face and you didn't mind that it made you sweat a little, no, you welcomed it because every minute thing now happened together with Gabriel.

Seeing him smile at you every day, softly waving at you from the shoreline, his legs knee-deep into the water, nearly had you sniffling and sobbing with all the love you felt for that once terribly sad and alone boy on Ward 4. He didn't deserve any of this…not being abandoned by his family and not being pushed into a system that didn't even treat him like a human being, but now, being with you in Belize, none of that even so much as touched him anymore.

After Gabe had ultimately been dismissed from the ward, all of his belongings cramped into an old suitcase and ready to practically jump on the plane, his brother did have the audacity to call you up quite a few times, cussing at you, threatening legal action and all that meaningless ramble but nothing ever came out of it. On one very peculiar occasion, where you had offered Gabe to answer the call, he had snapped at his brother in the most calm and precise way you'd ever witness.

"I'm finally happy now. Fuck off and never bother us again." Two short and sharply aimed statements before Gabe had hung up on his brother.

Ever since then, neither of you had been called or texted again and after the first, very exciting weeks of setting in, it grew more and more quiet and calm with you starting your job at the retirement home and Gabriel finally being in very frequent touch with the outside world. Frequent to a point where he started going on long walks at the beach, especially in the evenings, stargazing until his neck hurt, or taking excited trips to the local grocery stores and farmers markets.

Thinking about that had you smiling into the sun, your hand rummaging around in a striped linen bag to fish out an aluminum-wrapped set of sandwiches.

"The cheese from Belizie, huh?"