#big thing on contrast and parallelism for this one

[ilikelookingatthings]

gravity falls bonus parallels

anyone else think about how Stan might have been drawn to dipper a bit cuz he reminded him of little ford....and while we get that ford saw alot of himself in dipper (what with both being slightly overthinking paranoid nerds who like ddnd and weird supernatural stuff and gaving a birth mark that sets them apart a bit(though fkrds was more noticeable with his hands)...and the ford projected his dynamic with stan between dipper and mabel so didn't see mabel as reliable enough to try to teach as often to.

But I keep thinking......what if ford actually was seeing STAN in dipper as well?

We know despite his denial he felt a void since he didn't fight his dad on kicking Stan out that he tried to distract himself with college and vengeance to prove he didnt need that other school and his friend fiddleford and anomalies which he couldn't quite fill and that bill had taken advantage off ford's need for a deep connection and close companion because deep down ford DID miss his best friend/bro Stan.

So....while I get Ford's desire for a companion who gets it and being drawn to the similarities dipper had with himself......but I wonder if he was also drawn to dipper cuz he was subconsciously trying to fill the Stan shaped hole by his side with another little boy who didn't have glasses because the mental image of stan he has doesn't have glasses.

A subtle reminder that who he really wants is stan even if ge's to stubborn to see it.

And while there is the obvious parallel with how ford was given a big opptunity that fit his interests that would separate him from Stan that Stan felt worried about abs accidentally messed up cuz he didn't want to lose fore a d how dipper was offered the apprentiship and mabel torn between not wanting dipper yo resent if he missed a opportunity he would enjoy but also very much not wanting to be left behind by dipper which resulted in her messing up with blenden blanden ect ect.

And how dipper chooses hjs dynamic with Mabel over staying in gravity falls and growing with Mabel and forgivness and understanding to contrast how ford hadn't fully accepted it was accident and how sorry stan was and had let that ruined oppottunity/project separate ford from stan and stay stuck on that one point.

But lowkey from another angle and a squint dipper has parallels with stan and mabel has similarities to Ford.

Because emotions can be weird....like....stan accidentally messed up the project abd was kicked out by the dad and ford didn't fight for stan to stay so at fjrst glance you can only see Stan being the one feeling abandoned.....from from firds persoectuve stan messed up hjs project despite knowing how important it was to ford...didn't try to tell him about it before hand...so ford seed it a a betrayal or stan abandoning him first cuz they can't really go against the dad.

Like....I wonder if ford had felt hurt or abandoned by stan first and like stan chose to leave him or made it so with his actions like Mabel felt at the authority figure ford bringing up leaving mabel to dipper.

And how it makes a parallel to how due to feeling alone despite being told they'd be fine without their twin.....they were taken advantage of by someone they thought they could trust in bill/blenden blanden bill.

Where both ford and mabel kind of tried to distract themselves with their interests....Ford with his interest in studies or anomalies for example.....Mabel with Mabel land....both trying to distract themselves from things going to shit outside their bubble like how ford had been in denial about bill til more affects on fiddleford were revealed....and trying to fil that void with a cooler 'better' replacement for their twin....like dipper fresh and how bill echoes askects if sfan while being smart and flattering and always able to get into ford's head.

Where both Mabel and Ford struggled for a while to listen to dipper and stan....how the bubble gets popped but Mabel and Ford both felt bad once they finally accepted how bad Bill's plans were and their hand in making that possible even if both were tricked.

But like stan....dipper didn't guve up on Mabel and chose her just as stan never gave up on ford....

Like dipper having that talk with Mabel in the court scene is chef kiss....but I weirdly felt a echo of how dipper got through to mabel in how ford reacted to stan doubling down in his actions with the final switcharoo in how it proves how much stan cares and how any niggling thoughts that stsn hurt him on purpose out if jealous or not caring enough to not be careless was fully put to rest(even if it wasn't just for ford...Stan did that to protect the twins and everyone but still).

Mabel in trying to lie to herself and her feelings that dipper fresh could be a real replacement even thoigh you KNOW that to her dipper couldn't really be replaced like hoe ford lied to himself he didn't need Stan abd living through distractions in his weird bubble.

And both ford and mabel have dated multiple fantasy creatures and a sort of semi evil friend/ex in fiddleford and Gideon who created sort of cults and semi reformed a little to give the other a piece that could help that spread the amount of people involved.

That their brothers of dipper and stan had to help them out with. Both dipper and stan were the ones who gave mabel and ford a little extra push(NO PORTAL PUN INTENDED FOR STAN BTW) get get away from the aweful ex.

I mean yet ford was obsessed with taking bill down pre falling in portal ect but dude was still protecting the journal from being burned by stan even if it would be safer to destroy than to hide it which showed he hadn't quite left the bubble of how he told himsekf he'd be fine without stan abd would be famous and scomplished and prove everyone wrong ect.

And dippers weres a hat with a icon and so does stan.....and ford and mabel both wear sweaters....I mean the obvious similarities are still Dipper and Ford with Mabel and Stan....but it's really interesting if you tried to read things the opposite way abd search for parallels the twins share with the other twin.

Just....wanted to mention some of the stan dipper parallels and ford mabel parallels.

Any extra thoughts you guts want to add just write in a reblog or a note.

Any other parallels you guys noticed?

[sezja]

I do think there's something kind of bittersweet about one quieter aspect of Nitowikwe's last quest (as opposed to the larger and more obvious parallel it draws between Nitowikwe being willing to lay down her life if it came to it and Agna actually losing her life in the pursuit of a dream she never got to see come to fruition), and that's Shenza

Or rather Jeryk, really.

They both have these big kind of ridiculous dreams (a flying train and a giant trolley, respectively), but how the others respond to those dreams is... kind of telling, isn't it? Shenza's suggestion that their next train ought to be able to fly is met with the acknowledgment that the technology inside the dome could potentially make that happen, with the only real "yeah, but" being the question of whether the resulting vehicle could actually be called a train.

Hell, Zawpya follows it up with his own desire to make another Dawnblazer! What a sharp contrast to reasonable, practical Thaffe I love him so much I love all of them so fucking much

Jeryk's just kind of always shot down and gently scolded, by everyone except (of all people) Chai-Nuzz, from the sound of things, whose only real question is what it would even be used for. (And, depending on how you read it, maybe the WoL - at least one line of dialogue from Magnus implies the WoL is suggesting a giant trolley might be useful for his plans to expand the rail network.)

I don't think it points to any like, lack of affection for Jeryk on the part of Magnus or Thaffe, by any means, but rather that it's a continuing reflection - through Nitowikwe's survival and the impact that has on the rest of the group - of the weight losing Agna (and let's be fair, of living on the First) has had on the three of them. They're less inclined to be ambitious, less eager to entertain what seem like silly fantasies. Their whole world is still really in the early stumbling steps of learning how to live again, and the bare necessities have to be tended to first. There's not a lot of room for big dreams yet.

And everything about Nitowikwe suggests Agna was the big dreamer between her and Magnus, more willing to push limits and take risks - or at least able to support Magnus in his own riskier endeavors.

It's not even that I think a giant trolley is a reasonable or practical idea - but neither is a flying train! It's just interesting to contrast the different reactions to the boys' fantasies and how they're received by the others.

[nguyenfinity]

designs for the valk issue! literally big jacket/big pants design contrast

scrapped palettes below the cut 'cause they were driving me insane

hrhgjhfhgh

[snickerdoodlles]

#I think a lot of my dislike of the movie might have been just differences in taste #That movie was NOT my sense of humor and I disliked how they handled some things #Like...it kinda bugged me how they went about Ballister's prosthetic limb I won't lie. #I also don't know if Nimona ''not wanting to be a monster'' yet also wanting to cause so much destruction around her worked for me #Or at least not the way it was done #Like. I'm ALL for a character that wants to hurt others because of the way they've been hurt. That's based. #But that's not...really what they did? Or at least I don't think so #Like she's not REALLY a villain but she did sincerely want Ballister to be. #She values life. But she also wants to murder people? She wants violence??? Idk. It was a weird mix #She's SO sad that child was scared of her but earlier she like. Completely fucks up another kid's game. For no reason. #God and Nimona being 1000 years old makes a lot of her actions kinda weird. She feels so 14 to me yet she's immortal afssf #Also just not that big a fan of the trope where it's revealed ''this ancient legend was actually kids the whole time!!!'' #but I know that's just my tastes #HOWEVER. I also think it made the movie weaker in certain aspects. #Prejudice is learned. So making it feel SO ingrained into the very beings of this world's people #IDK man did not hit it's mark for me #the queer allegory was legitimately very good though. loved that (op's tags)

Nimoma has good emotional payoff and animation but nothing else to really write home about TBH

It's very SPOP in that way, where the arcs and scenes are solid when viewed outside of the media in gifset or clip form but don't work as well when actually watching what they're from

For sure! I think that's a problem she-ra and toh both share with Nimona—they struggle with setup but then go ham on the payoff, which leaves everything feeling somewhat unearned.

The end of the movie bugged me in particular—Ballister's 180 with calling Nimona a monster (something he KNOWS pushes her to the brink) after one conversation with his ex-boyfriend was...I think out of place?

Normally if you have a character make a wrong choice like that you, as the audience, would be questioning the whole movie if they had ever REALLY changed. Was Ballister's loyalty truly to Nimona or to the Institute/Goldenloin? But, by that point in the movie they had really sold me on Ballister's complete acceptance of Nimona and disregard of the institute, so....why would he turn on Nimona then? I'm surprised they didn't do this plot the other way, which would instead have only made it seem like Ballister betrayed Nimona, you know? Like they did in Tangled. That way you don't undo Ballister's movie long arc with one scene, but you can still have Nimona go berserk and make her way into the heart of the city.

There were also a couple of other things that felt kinda dropped by the end. Ballister being the first commoner to become a knight? The Queen's important role in this society? This kingdom's prejudice going SO deep that not even a child would give Nimona a chance after saving their life, yet blowing up the wall changed everyone's minds in the end?

There were a lot of good pieces, but they weren't quite put together in the right ways.

[splonk-fox]

The Chosen One's actions in Animator vs. Animation 11: A Mini Analysis

Recently, with the release of the latest Animator vs. Animation episode, I have seen many people begin to view Chosen's character in a more negative light. Now I can't lie and say that this episode doesn't exactly do him any favors, however I think people need to hold their horses a bit when it comes to assuming how he actually feels about the Newgrounds rampage.

First off, the big one, Mitsi's death. Chosen is framed to have been the one who killed her, and it's clear that Agent, and the narrative, believe it was him who did it. But if there's anything I've learned about red herrings, it's the fact that what seems like the obvious answer might not be so obvious after all. We don't actually know if Chosen was the one who killed her, all we see is a a flurry of fireballs raining from the sky, one of which hits Mitsi and completely incinerates her, then we see Chosen flying down from above. Considering that Dark is also shown to have flown in from above, it could've just as easily been him who killed her.

As a matter of fact, Dark would probably make more sense seeing as his most common form of attack is fireballs. Regardless of who did it or not, I do think it's important to remember that Chosen isn't the only culprit and that we shouldn't immediately assume it was him.

But let's say, for a moment, that Chosen was the one who did it, I still don't think that frames him in as negative of a light as the fandom portrays.

For starters I should say that we don't know how Chosen feels about what he has just done, at least not in this episode. However we see the exact same Newgrounds rampage from his perspective in Season 2, and there it's pretty clear that this is the point where he starts having second thoughts, and his body language in this episode actually reflects this.

When we first see him, Chosen is just sort of... calmly descending upon the destruction, there's no indication of what emotions he is feeling at this moment, but I honestly don't look at this and see "yeah, he definitely enjoys this"

His movements are slow and non-aggressive, there's no real energy in his actions, no sign of pride or enjoyment, he just sort of flies over the the Newgrounds tank and lands on top of it. To me this doesn't come off as someone who is enjoying this, this is coming off as someone who is taking in all the destruction around him and simply trying to process it. It's not positive, nor is it negative.

But I think the most telling thing about it is how his body language contrasts Dark, take a look at this shot. Notice anything?

For one, Dark is centered while Chosen is the one standing off to the side, portraying him as almost a secondary threat, a person standing alongside his much worse partner.

Moreso than this however, look at their poses. Dark has his hands on his hips, clearly taking pride in his much destruction he and Chosen have caused. Chosen by comparison is just sort of... standing there, there is no clear show of pride in his posture, as a matter of fact, this shot here almost reminds me of this one.

In both cases, Chosen is seen off to the side, staring down at the destruction while not showing any real emotion, and in this case, it was clearly trying to communicate that Chosen was not enjoying this as much as Dark was.

He's even seen seemingly pleading with Dark to stop what he is doing, and you wanna know something really interesting about this shot?

Chosen and Dark are both shown on top of a tank, just like we saw in AvA 11. I'm not saying this is the same scene, but I am saying that the parallels here are likely not meant to be a coincidence. In both cases Dark is clearly taking pride in the destruction, Chosen meanwhile looks a lot more unsure.

Now for the high-five scene. People have already pointed this out but Chosen almost seems to hesitate before giving Dark a high-five, as if he's unsure about it.

Another detail I also wanted to bring attention to is how Dark initiates the high-five. It may seem small at first until you remember that this isn't the first time we have seen such a gesture between the two characters.

We all see this happen in The Flashback, and ya wanna know the interesting thing? Chosen was the one who initiated it. Keep in mind that the context of this seen was that Chosen finally escaped Alan's abuse and was clearly happy about it. It should also be worth noting that unlike Chosen, who took a few seconds to reciprocate the high-five in AvA 11, Dark does it almost instantly.

This is all to say, while this episode does not portray Chosen in the most favorable light, I don't think this is as simple as "he killed Mitsi and enjoyed it".

I want to make it clear that I do not think Chosen is innocent in this scenario, whether he enjoyed it or not, he still actively took part in this rampage, all I'm saying is that we don't really know Chosen's feelings during this moment or if he was even the one who killed Mitsi in the first place, and with how he was previously portrayed during this exact same rampage, I have more reason to believe that he didn't actually enjoy this at all. So before you raise your pitchforks and call Chosen the worst person ever, consider that maybe, there is more nuance to this story than first meets the eye.

[conflictofthemind]

Thoughts on "Escape from Camazotz"

Oppressive Suburbia, Conformity, and Season 5 Themes

I've long thought that a major focus of Season 5 will be the contrast between the families of The Wheelers and The Byers, and exploring how non-traditional family environments can be freeing vs the oppressive structure of the nuclear family.

In a Wrinkle In Time, Camazotz is a planet controlled by the big bad of the book, the "IT", who forces the citizens into a conformity that resembles American suburbia. All of the houses the same, the citizens the same, doing the same things at the same time without individual identity. Without anything different. Different means a lot of things, but with Stranger Things dropping different in reference to Will's identity and the presumable themes of this season, it will heavily codify as queerness and how it threatens the cisheterosexual family model.

Henry was raised in the 1950s, a decade still revered by conservatives for it's traditional family dynamics that supposedly were the peak of culture and happiness for all. That was all a lie, of course, and Henry knew so as he shows to Nancy and Eleven during his monologue. The second most conservative decade aside from the 1950s in American society is widely considered to be the 1980s.

The Creels will serve in parallel to The Wheelers; the worst example of what they could become and the damage that this type of family could do to a child that is different in any way. Notice how Vecna selectively shows Nancy visions of The Wheelers dying, but not anyone else she may consider family or friends (like Jonathan).

That is; unless they change their ways and come together as a healthy functioning family facing their traumas, The Wheelers will be toast.

Karen has been moved up to a main character role this season. Ted's actor says the father starts to show up more for Holly (hold that) and realizes he wants to act differently. Holly has been recast. Finn has said Mike goes on a much more personal journey this season, and steps up as a leader.

Oh, also: the catalyst for all of this is that Holly goes missing. The contrast will help show how the Byers (including El and Hopper here) were able to pull together and help solve Will's disappearance, versus how the Wheelers as a closed off nuclear family grapple with Holly's vanishing.

Each of the Byers is in some kind of a non-1950s conformist relationship, but particularly Will (not in one now but we all know he will be). I think El might represent, after she breaks up with Mike, the fear of the unmarried woman being satisfied without a husband. The above shot really emphasizes my point.

I predict that Will will end up coming out to his family rather early on, and we will see all of them immediately accept him with little surprise or push-back. Will is a visible gay man who comes from an open minded non traditional family (divorced, non-married, adoptive) that is willing to have honest conversations.

But this theme will place the most focus on the Wheelers. Mike is the main character of said family and this will particularly focus on his arc, and his acceptance of his queerness in the midst of suburban conformity.

He is not visible, he comes from a Reagan-supporting family who don't communicate with each other. He is not particularly close with his family like Will is. He pushes his feelings down and tries his damn hardest to be normal despite it all. His trauma hasn't really been addressed at all. He is falling back into his usual habits - the one thing he dared to do different (grow his hair long) has gone back to how it was.

It's not all doom and gloom though. This season above all will be a redemption arc of the American nuclear family, how they choose to escape their conformity and learn to be there for each other, thus overpowering Vecna. Not that the Wheelers are going to end this personally.

"Great, more hysteria. Just what we need". "It's the news, now indistinguishable from the tabloids".

[sightoru]

hello scout!! i come for your blurb game!

yuuta + eyes + you touched me, and i came alive.

[authors note: god i love a good soulmate au.

Yuuta is awkward, readers a bit bitchy. All in a days work for yours truly.]  —————————————————————— Rika's been gone for a while now, same with Maki and the others. Nothing bad happened, per se, it's just how life works: lines intersect, and then run parallel after a while. 

It's getting colder now, he can see his breath when he walks down the sidewalks in Kyoto; he makes a little game with himself where he tries to see how big of a cloud he can make with his breath. He rocks his feet back and forth on the tactile paving, relishes the way the pebbled texture presses on the bottom of his shoes. 

He's so distracted by his little game, and the way the cold feels on his cheeks and feeling the pebbled texture under his shoes he doesn't even notice you standing directly next to him. 

(You're thoroughly unimpressed, by the way. You have him sized up in one glance. His shoes are worn out, there's a tear in between the sole and where the canvas connects with them. His jeans are patched in between his thighs, and the elbows of his sweater are worn thin. He's tall, though, which makes up for a lot. Dark hair frames his baby face. You watch him for a while, notice the cupids bow of his lip and the sharp angles of his jaw. You're taken aback momentarily by how dark the blue of his eyes are and how stark the contrast is compared to how dark the purple is under his eyes.) 

He notices you after a while, mid shuffle of his feet. You stare him down, intensely so and it makes him feel like a prey animal. Like you're the fox and he's the rabbit cornered in his burrow. He's not sure what he wants more; for him to run or for you to take a bite. 

"Hello," he says, mustering up some weak sort of smile. 

("Painful," you think.) 

If you hear him, there's no sort of acknowledgment there. You meet his eyes after a moment, and he can hear the faint parting of your lips before you speak, "There's a hole in your shoe." 

"Oh," he blinks at you, and you think about how wide his eyes are, "there is," you watch him bring his left foot forward, wiggling his toes and enunciating the rip on the side. "I've had these for years. I think when I was 16 ? I got them at some second hand shop in Tokyo." He's not really sure why he's rambling. Or why he's telling you about the shoe's Maki took him to buy. 

(Maybe it's because that was a good day to him. Maybe he just missed sharing things with someone.)

"Nice," you say, but the way you say it doesn't sound nice. You sound unimpressed. You look across the street, waiting for the light to change from red to white; symbolizing that you can walk away from him and this weird conversation.

(He's intriguing to you, in some strange sort of way. The pull of his dark blue eyes and the softness of his voice. You glance at him again, begrudgingly, and feel something in your chest shift slightly. You fight the urge to gag.) 

Yuuta's wants to say something else to you — a question about your day or where you're going. He's grown into his friendliness, he realizes, and the thought make pride swell in his chest, followed instantly by a twinge of sadness when he wonders what Maki would think of him now. 

The light across the street turns though, and the red hand changes to the symbol of someone walking and you're moving immediately, swaying off the sidewalk with all the grace of a fox. He stares at you for a moment, watches your hand clasped to your bag, head turned towards your shoes (not ripped, not the cleanest either) as if you're memorizing the gaps between the white stripes on the road. 

Something happens that makes his skin prickle into goosebumps. Some sort of déjà vu settles into his veins and for a moment he thinks his lungs have forgotten how to expand. There's a clawing feeling in his chest and it almost feels like Rika's long nails have gripped around his heart. 

There's a car coming, just down the turn of the street and it's not slowing down, despite the bright yellow lights flashing — signaling someone is crossing. And Yuuta just can't have that trauma again, not with everything he's done to work through it. Not when he knows how pretty your eyes are. Not when he's heard the light inclination of your voice. 

Without much thought, without much care, his legs are pushing his tattered shoes across the street, both arms outstretched and using all the lankiness of his body to reach you as fast as possible. 

Your yelp of surprise goes unnoticed by him — later he thinks all the adrenaline must've drowned it out — same with the sound of your bag clattering to the ground, and the screech of the van tires, because the only thing he can focus on is how bright everything looks now. 

You touched him, and he came alive.

Suddenly the world is washed in a swath of colors, much more bright and beautiful than he ever imagined. It's like seeing clearly for the first time, everything's lost it's hazy hue and now it's all bright and blinding. 

(You're still trapped underneath him. The cold ground makes your back hurt, but you can't really focus on that either. The whole worlds a bright color now and you find it nauseating for a second before you remember the stories your mother told you when she met your father. 'Everything was dull she said,' soft smile adorning her fine features, 'then he touched me, and suddenly everything was bright.'

"Soulmate," you think, somewhere in the concussed haze of your brain.) 

"I'm sorry," he starts, slowly getting off of you, "I just didn't want anything to happen to you and I didn't think you saw the car coming."  You don't respond, don't really have the energy too, especially when sitting up makes you feel like you just lifted the weight of the world. You look at him again, take in his blue eyes that have somehow gotten bluer and mindlessly take in his endless tirade of apologies and justifications.  "What's your name?" You ask, interrupting another apology before it comes out.  "Okkotsu Yuuta," he tells you, somehow smiling despite everything that's happened. When you tell him yours in response, you watch the cupids bow of his lips stretch into a smile, and the sight of it makes your heart ache in your chest.  "Yuuta," you say, noticing the way your mouth moves as you do. "Do you want to go shoe shopping with me?" 

[conceptofjoy]

could you please explain how you think rose's gender/gender presentation works (i really like your interpretations of these things and. also rose lalonde)

YUEESSS. i have posts sprinkled about my blog at varying levels of understanding of rose's character. i can summarize the recent one better now.

rose was flexing her punk muscles when she got in the game, her alternative and contrarian wardrobe is a stark contrast to her mother's clothing. she totally felt invincible, and she acted and dressed like it too. of course, she was under the thumb of doc scratch at the time, and crashed hard post cascade, but you can kinda see the 180 in clothing style when she tried to be more mature for her date with kanaya.

light colors, drinking to be more closer to her mother who she has complex feelings about, it's very... inline with mainstream fashion trends? not that that's a bad thing, but it's a visual indicator of her thought processes. this is what she thinks is what she SHOULD be doing, wallowing in the regret for the relationships she had with her mom. that's not to say that the date was like,,, cishet in the slightest LMFAO. this happens in parallel to the dirkjake volcano scene. its supposed mean like HEY, these fucked up teens are going about this the wrong way!!! i could analyze that, but the post would be too long.

im a big fan of tfem rose getting a godtier 'cis' body "at the cost of her mother's death". roxy's also a trans girl to me, triptychgardner has a lot of stellar posts about trans woman rose's mom and was rlly who opened my eyes to rose's gender.

in the end, queerness is like... the final revelation every kid starts to come across. doing what is good for YOU, and trying to shake the cultural roles that try to hold back their self actualization. a few posts ago, i was like how does a queer identify what is them and what is beliefs planted in them by society,,, LOL IDK. it just seems like rose would be happier if she was gnc and a studfem.

[barrenclan]

How do you decide on motifs? Like sleep being associated with death, roses being associated with death? And how did you go about assigning each motif to a character (especially more character specific ones)? Like I get that Rainhaze was seen as a coyote in omens because of his association with Ranger, but why is Nightberry associated with visions, why is Cootstorm associated with never changing, conservative ideals?

Here's a good way to think about this: PATFW is not coming out of nowhere. Seems obvious, right? But every decision made is one that I had to intentionally choose, with a goal in mind for what I wanted to do with them. So I don't have real animals, or real people - I have certain stories in mind, and the characters are tools that I use to express these ideas. Let's take two examples brought up here, and I'll show you what I mean.

Asphodelpaw's death. For this story, I wanted to have a big, climatic moment that really jerks around the story, much in the same way that Shellspring's reveal did in TDS. I know that I want Rainhaze to be an exploration of a character who starts out good and turns complicated, and that I want him to not be redeemed. Okay, so how do I make sure Rainhaze is beyond redemption? He'd have to do something really awful, like killing someone important. The rest of the Clan wouldn't be as impactful if he killed them, so it should be one of his family members, and someone we really care about. Okay, who do I want him to kill? Pinepaw is my narrator, so if I want him to keep narrating, I can't kill him. I want Slugpelt to feel the consequences of this murder Rainhaze makes, and I want her to later confront him about it, so he can't kill her. I can't quite get into why I want Daffodilpaw to live yet, because of spoilers, but I have a certain message I want to create with Daffodilpaw, and she can't die as part of it. So Asphodelpaw is the only one left. Okay, why would it be impactful for her to die? Because she just came into herself, and apologized to Pinepaw, and is on track to grow into a better person. So it's extra tragic - and extra irredeemable - of Rainhaze to kill her. There you go, that's the reasoning behind Asphodelpaw's death.

The sleep/death motif. I have suffered from personal difficulties surrounding death, specifically involved with intrusive thoughts before I go to sleep. So those two ideas are very linked in my mind, and because PATFW is a darker story, I wanted to explore it. Okay, how do I work it into the story? Rainhaze is a character who's disappeared, presumed dead, by the time the story starts. Alright, maybe I can work it in there. I used it for the first time in Issue 4, contrasting between Rainhaze and Slugpelt's views on what happens after death. Alright, so now I have a thematic parallel between their characters and their views. Okay, how does this affect the future plot? As Rainhaze gets further involved with Defiance, his views on killing change, and that strengthens this association with sleep. So later, when Slugpelt kills him, I can bring this thematic parallel back around and make it really resonate, because I've built up the connection over the whole story. There you go, that's how you create a motif.

I hope you found this interesting. Often I find that a lot of writing advice is vague and nonspecific, so I tried to make my reasoning behind these things as clear as possible. From the outside, it may seem like absolutely anything can happen in a story, but from an internal perspective there are only so many ways to get to a point I want to make, so those decisions have to lead to each other if I want to create a natural thread.

[moretheta]

ok i know i'm the 101st person to compare the phantom troupe and the heil-ly family, but with each new chapter we get more and more to work with & i'm chewing on it 24/7 like drywall. let's talk fatalism:

so first of all shoutout to the number one champion of this theory, my main man nobunaga:

literally idk if the guy is in a nostalgic mood or what, but he will not stop yapping about the similarities and for that i commend him & his service

for the record, phinks & feitan don't seem tooooo convinced. phinks specifically points out that hey, actually, we aren't amateurs like these guys and we don't have some crazy genocide murderscheme going on. this much is obvious in the way the PT reacts to luini's insane murderfanboying with "huh????????" *stab*

the phantom troupe do not want to destroy the world, nor were they designed to- they were designed for a very specific purpose and that was to create an environment (a web, hah) that could lure in the big criminals they wanted revenge against, while being dangerous enough to keep the petty criminals out.

these are two very different vision boards!!!

....that nevertheless share some strikingly similar imagery

and we find even more parallels in their respective leaders: aside from the obvious biblical resemblances, morena and chrollo share a similar outlook on life-- more specifically, a similar outlook on death.

more seem uncaring about their respective prospects of survival. self-preservation is such an inherently human trait- hell, a trait inherent to the living- that the lack of any such instinct whatsover is pretty damn terrifying. it leads to a certain kind of alienation from humanity that we know at least chrollo has felt (when he says shit like "humans are so interesting" like damn get your head outta your ass you are one of them). it makes them striking and scary and unpredictable. fucking brocco li points this out:

he's talking about the troupe here, but he could just as easily be talking about the heil-ly. because once again, the mafia is the establishment and the heil-ly and phantom troupe are decidedly not. the regular kakin mafia looks out for their own self-interests, which can lead to unchecked greed but is also what causes them to not go around murdering civilians just because they feel like it.

think of the loss in profits!!

now, nobunaga seems to think of the heil-ly as a sort of prototype- unrefined spider. when they're first investigating the heil-ly hideout, he says "maybe a switch was flipped when one of their own was killed," [see figure 1 above] which is a reasonable assumption to make considering his own experience. but when we check back in with the heil-ly...

their reaction to losing luini is "bummer," before immediately talking about what abilities they should develop to replace him. and in the second panel, when hinrigh kills padaille, the guys who are supposed to be his comrades just.. run away. later morena mentions that those same members are now leveling up to get revenge on hinrigh, but it seems like that stems more from hurt pride and morbid curiosity to see what they can accomplish with their shiny new powers.

these mfs are singing a "let's go hunt the mafia" jingle

big contrast to the way the xi-yu react to the death of lynch^

now both the troupe and the heil-ly are known to have fairly blasé reactions towards death and violence and general in the past. and that extends to their comrades' fights:

shalnark and co play cards while uvogin get leeches injected into his veins, or phinks & co stand by and watch feitan almost get his ass handed to him by zazan in meteor city- before he starts taking things seriously, that is. but i think that comes from a genuine respect in their comrades' strength. like everyone knew uvo could handle the shadow beasts just like they knew feitan could handle zazan. the heil-ly also seem to enjoy each others company and have a great rapport while chopping up dead bodies... but i think they don't expect much from their comrades in the way the troupe does. i mean, it's like phink's says: the troupe doesn't take on amateurs. everyone in the heil-ly is an amateur (except morena) so i don't think their laissez-faire attitude comes from confidence in their own abilities- i think they actually just do not care.

this whole exchange felt sooooo spiders-coded. which makes sense: i mean plenty of them are fans of the spiders! i think yokotani (the lawyer) was deadass trying to get an autograph lol

one thing to note is that when nobunaga attacks terebellum, he assumes the reason the gang hadn't shown signs of confrontation thus far was because they were convinced they were safe- that nobunaga and hinrigh couldn't get to them. i think that's only half the truth: when hinrigh throws a knife at this guy (the heil-ly's "organ" whatever that could mean) he just thinks "huh i wonder how long this would take to heal," before being saved by an issue of shonen jump. then he gets chastised for being reckless and going against morena's orders to keep his head down, but it's all very unserious. then everyone just kind of wanders off to do their own thing.

can i also just say i was getting from real uvogin vibes from terebellum over here

again, i can't really make any blanket statements with information we have available. but my current outlook is that the biggest difference between the spiders and the heil-ly right now is that the heil-ly is what chrollo had initially envisioned for the troupe: remember the "i am the head but i don't matter and you shouldn't make choices with my life in mind" speech? i think this is what that would look like. we know that (up until yorknew), chrollo truly believed that everyone saw the spiders as he did. that he would have no value as a hostage. that they would all be able to accept his death and move on:

and this turned out to be a fatal flaw.

the levels of cognitive dissonance going on during this whole exchange...

he was soooo in hhis head about being above humanity in his own little conceptual space where life and death don't matter that he forgot to look around and realize not everyone was there with him.

there were some, like phinks, who were in line with chrollo's philiosophy. kudos to them ig. but there were enough people who wanted to keep their friend alive- and are still working their asses off to do so today!- that his plan failed. pakunoda chief among them god rest her soul. this moment was one of the first dominos that sent into into the downward spiral he's on today. because after all he invested in the spider, all he gave up for it, it's web is slowly but surely falling apart. he is losing one lifelong member after another in events he is either powerless to stop or has a direct hand in. the ethos that kept him in this purgatory where he could temporarily transcend pain and guilt and humanity is unravelling, and the people he loves (not all of them, at least) don't share in it, and if that's the case then they've been suffering all this time. and if that's the case then what the hell has he been doing, and what the hell is the point.

so now he's stuck on a ship with a group of people that are like his own but worse (and younger and stupider g'bless) lead by someone who's like him but at peace. (and also probably worse lol). having a breakdown because people might love him. also he's trying to steal a national treasure because this is a nic cage movie apparently hey how many words is this post again

TLDR; chrollo is loosing the idgaf war

[deadbaguette]

Crack AU treated seriously: Diomdes goes to Ithaca with a twist

So this would generally be your typical Diomedes going to Ithaca AU. Presumably after getting exiled (? Is there a better word for it?), instead of going to modern day Italy he goes to Ithaca under the impression that he’ll see Odysseus there. But, of course he doesn’t because The Odyssey is happening. The twist that makes NO SENSE and is just purely my want to see my platonic rarepair happen (Telemachus and Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus), and the twist is: for whatever reason, Neo is there with Diomedes. Don’t ask why because I could not explain to you a good reason to make this happen lmfao

Story elaborated below but it’s a little long be warned

I like the dynamic of Neoptolemus and Diomedes, mostly because in so many ways as soldiers Diomedes foils/contrasts Achilles but in so many ways parallels his son. Diomedes gets on begrudgingly with Neo, and I could go on a whole other rant on a different post about some fake dynamics/scenarios for just them, but the main point in this post is that Neo somehow SOMEHOW tags along with Diomedes. They reach Ithaca together and meet Penelope and Telemachus.

They greet Diomedes and Pyrrhus with good courtesy, but the elephant in the room of “hold on where tf is your husband??? he was so eager to go back to you guys???” is very present. One way or another Penelope explains the situation, that being Odysseus is absent/mia (much to his own dismay) and the suitors all trying to wed Penelope. Diomedes is sad obv (I’m not gonna go super big into the angst right now) but he tries to brainstorm with Penelope on solutions for her predicament. Since Odysseus was his closest friend (more than friend for me personally but u can interpret it as platonic if u want) and he knows that Odysseus would want what’s best for his wife and son, they think of a solution that can the guarantee of their safety as of now until they hear news of Odysseus. That solution is fake marriage bcs I am a bit of a sucker for that troupe.

But back to Neoptolemus because he’s here too, I want him to bond with Telemachus what with their dads not being here (one’s dead one’s absent). Neo is like way stronger than Telemachus so at first he thinks he’s a bit of a wimp (keep in mind they’re like both teenagers, Neo’s life was just kinda fucked up), but over time they get along better. Pyrrhus’ relationship with Odysseus is a little complicated, so while Penelope and Diomedes might share all the good stories/parts of Odysseus with, Pyrrhus got off to a slightly rocky start with him lol. What with Odysseus taking him away from his mom and basically all the war shenanigans (war crimes), Telemachus for the first time has a whole and humanized version of his dad. It’s more than what the suitors have said out of malice and jealousy, the things Neo has told him have opened up the trickery/cunning side of Odysseus more than he’d known before. He’s jealous that it seems like everyone knows more about his dad than him, but he’s grateful to have someone his age who would view Odysseus more like he would: an annoying dad/uncle??? (Neo vehemently objects to this, and Odysseus would too. “You’re not my fucking dad!!!” “Holy shit thank the GODS for that!!!”)

All in all, happy family. Odysseus returns home to Penelope and Telemachus, and now two surprise guests too. Telemachus has like 3 kinda parents now (Diomedes might be more like an uncle) and a kinda brother/friend/??? I love my little delusional found family. Odysseus is more than a little surprised, considering this IS Neoptolemus. Kid did a 180° in terms of personality in Troy and then ANOTHER 180° somewhere on Ithaca at some point. Or maybe more like a 90° turn in terms of personality, I imagine Telemachus is the most sane of the family and it is much to his dismay.

And when they all eventually die (Diomedes won’t ascend to godhood here I want him to be in the underworld with the rest of the fam) they’ll live happily in the underworld and Pyrrhus can catch up with his dad and mom.

[anthurak]

So with Ghostfuckers presumably just a little over two weeks away now, I thought it would be a good time to do some theorizing on what we might be seeing.

Now I think it’s pretty clear from the trailer clips we’ve seen that this is going to be THE big Blitzo lore-and-trauma-dump episode. With it looking like whatever demon is running the hotel subjecting Blitzo to all kinds of horrific visions of his past that he’s been desperate to keep buried for the last fifteen years. Specifically what looks to be the aftermath of the circus fire and presumably Blitzo being blamed for everything and being disowned by his family. Which in turn royally fucked him up and left Blitzo the tangled wreck of trauma, grief, guilt and self-loathing hiding beneath a thin veneer of cocky assholishness that we know him as today.

So yeah, it should be a fun time :D

But with Blitzo out of the way, what could we expect from the rest of the main cast this episode?

Well with the clips of Ghostfuckers we have seeming to just show Blitzo and Millie, I think we’re going to get something of a ‘revisit with a twist’ to what we saw in Truthseekers, ie; I.M.P. is split up with two members captured or otherwise put in danger and the other two spending the episode trying to rescue them. With the twist this time being that Moxxie and Millie have swapped places.

To whit; Blitzo and Millie end up getting trapped in this freaky hotel and spend the episode getting subjected to most (though not all…) of the traumatic-flashback-torture visions, trippy hallucinations, body-jacking and general what-the-fuckery while Loona and Moxxie spend the episode trying to break in and save them.

Now one interesting thing about this is that I don’t it’s just going to be Blitzo subjected to these visions. Namely, I think this clip of Blitzo and Millie fighting that many have pegged as a flashback to their first meeting is actually Millie getting one of these traumatic flashback visions. Furthermore, I have a hunch that this flashback is going to closely parallel the one we got to Moxxie first meeting Blitzo back in Exe’s and Oohs; that this was actually a particular or even THE lowest point in Millie’s life, likely coming off of, among other things, her very bad breakup with Chazz (I imagine this is always where we’re going to get that rumored Chazz appearance), and just like with Moxxie, is was actually Blitzo who helped her out of it.

As I detailed in this post, I think this detail of Blitzo having actually been a POSITIVE presence in both Moxxie’s and Millie’s lives is going to wind up being a BIG part of this episodes resolution, ie; the big REBUTTAL to Blitzo’s belief that he ‘makes everyone’s lives worse’.

Moving on to what Loona and Moxxie might be getting up to in this episode, I did say that I think Blitzo and Millie will be getting subject to most, but not ALL of the traumatic-flashback-torture visions. To whit; I wouldn’t be surprised if Loona and Moxxie just subjected to just a bit of these visions as well.

In Moxxie’s case, I imagine this could make for a brief but very strong character moment that showcases both his own growth and shows him as a contrast/foil to Blitzo: Moxxie getting hit with his own traumatic flashbacks, namely those related to his father, but is actually able to fight through them or just shrug them off to show just how much he’s actually processed his trauma.

Whereas in Loona’s case, it could be more of a preview of whatever issues she’s actually got going on. As in, aside from perhaps a quick teasing glimpse, we actually DON’T see any of Loona’s flashback, but instead just how much it messes with her afterwards. Maybe we’ll get something especially fun like the traumatic visions backfiring a bit on the hotel manager by sending Loona into a berserker, murderous rage that leads her to start ripping and tearing through the hotel.

And while we’re on the topic of cool shit Loona might/could/should get to do this episode, what if there is a point where Loona and Moxxie are fully cut off from Blitzo and Millie via freaky demon magic shenanigans and have no way to get to them without the Asmodean Crystal, which Blitzo still has, or some other form of portal magic. Only for Loona, in a moment of sheer anger, fear and desperation, to rip open one of those portals she used to make all the time, but now WITHOUT the use of the Goetic Grimoire, to get to Blitzo and Millie.

Basically, I’d really like to see a payoff to all the hints we’ve gotten that Loona is actually a serious prodigy with magic :D

And going back to the potential parallels with Truthseekers, I’m definitely also hoping we end on a big, awesome fight scene between I.M.P. and whatever the hotel owner is that’s been fucking with them.

Finally, when it comes to the ending coda of the episode, as I alluded to earlier I think this episode is going to represent a MAJOR character-shift for Blitzo: In the form of Moxxie and Millie not only getting a front-row seat to what Blitzo is really dealing with, but also (along with Loona) making it clear just how much they actually CARE about Blitzo. Notably in a way that Blitzo can’t write off, rationalize and deny like he did with Stolas and all his other romantic partners, ie; Moxxie and Millie consider Blitzo a friend that they CARE about.

[saintsenara]

Do you think there is parallel between Peter and ron.

Fandom does Peter wrong. That is a fact. He is either absent or is present just for comic relief or is pure evil. But all those characterisation are simply cartoonish. As if written by a person who is living in la la land...

Peter, just like Lupin, we only know major things about him. But like not many people see lupin as a gray shade character only a kind fluffy guy, Peter is polarised to the bad one....

Ron similarly is often given the last place if how much of a good friend each person in golden trio was to be questioned. And that is a tragedy in itself because atleast for Ron we have so much material...

Infact for me, Ron will always be a person who has bigger heart than jkr's favorite mary sue-Lily Evans. She did what any good mother should do. But fandom never stops going on and on about it Or even Harry's sacrifice at the end is so much singed about...but then we have Ron, an 11 year kid who for the sake of defeating voldy, told his new Friends to leave him. He sacrificed himself at 11. Everyone was sure that he is risking his life...but no one i see ever gushes about that act of bravery. It is always about one Potter Or the other.

Peter too. I mean he won't have been friends with the other three for 10 years if they just tolerated him and vice versa. But making him evil kr stupid kr dumb Or hideous to look at in his childhood or teen years is like taking all his personality away and giving us just a shell of a person...

He did become animagi at 15 and that is quite a commendable magic. He is cunning to pull up his stunt as a spy....

Like war as sirius describes in gof is so dark and scary. And people forgot that big things make a person change.

Ron on the other hand had done quite a lot in his life time but often he is found to be judged for leaving his friends.

I believe that the only difference between them is that ron recognised his faults and made correction. Meanwhile pettigrew simply kept on walking on the wrong path he chose....

What do you think on this..?

thank you very much for the ask, pal!

i don't think this entirely works. ron gets cast by the fandom as a gluttonous moron who's also a bad friend primarily on account of the films - and as a bad person by people who want to ship hermione with other people but don't have the nerve to do this in a complex or interesting way - but the text never suggests that either harry or hermione think of him as being in last place in the trio.

indeed, when harry does think of himself as better than ron - when ron gets made a prefect over him in order of the phoenix - he feels horrible for his brief flash of jealousy and soon gets over it. on other occasions when he notes something about himself which could be seen as superior to ron - when he notes that ron got no outstandings at owl, for example - harry doesn't actually force a comparison which is designed to position ron below him. they end up doing the same newts, which is what harry - who sees ron as his partner in crime - cares about.

ron is also demonstrably harry's best friend, and harry tends to enable him and automatically side with him in conflict - it's an example of great self-growth that he doesn't cut hermione off in half-blood prince when ron does, since he's perfectly happy to do so in prisoner of azkaban. but he's also demonstrably hermione's best friend too. harry's relationship with her is, as he says, sibling-like, which doesn't just mean that it's not romantic, but that it contains a "you can't choose your family" vibe - he loves her fiercely, but he also finds her exasperating in a way ron doesn't, doesn't make any real effort to learn about her interests or include her in his, and is often quite harsh to her. ron - in contrast - does see his relationship with her as one of active choice.

this is why i never really like the idea that the trio and the marauders are meant to be parallels. on the surface, ron and harry should be the equivalent of james and sirius and hermione should be remus...

but they're not, because the clear dynamic of the marauders in canon is that they were a group centred around james. all three of sirius, remus, and peter clearly understood james as their best friend, and their relationships among themselves primarily depend on their understanding of their and the others' relationship to james. there is - i think - a credible case to be made that, if james was removed from the picture entirely, but not in a way that caused the profound trauma of the canon timeline [if he just moved away with lily, for example], the remaining three would drift apart.

james - of course - only understood sirius as his equal, his brother. peter is obviously someone he considered inferior to the two of them - albeit in a fond way, rather than a cruel one. he clearly thinks of him the way a teenager might think of their pre-teen sibling - someone you love and are happy to include in your social life if they do what you want, someone you also don't want to embarrass you in front of your cool teenage friends by letting them do what they want instead of following your instructions. remus is clearly someone he didn't think of as quite so socially inferior to him, but he also still seems to have understood him as peripheral to his and sirius' rampant codependence.

the trio doesn't have anything like this dynamic. even though harry is narratively unequal to ron and hermione - he is their leader, they are his disciples - the relationships across the three of them [harry's active choice to be friends with ron, harry's feeling that hermione is his sister; ron's active choice to be friends with hermione, his pseudo-familial relationship with harry] are much more equal than those among the marauders.

what i have been convinced by, however, is @whinlatter's belief that the best parallel for peter in the series is ginny:

[vidavalor]

Fish: A Good Omens Sex Meta Thing

A deep dive meta on fish and that deathless death.

NSFW under the cut. TW: Mention of Satan's attacks on Crowley. Also for those who asked me for more on the Ineffable Husbands and trauma-informed partnership.

Aziraphale, listen to me. The supernatural world? It's a mess. Life under the sea is better than anything they've got Up there...

This is basically the requested "Crepes 2" but you don't have to have read that first. I did link it at the bottom if you have not and you're interested in more meta like this one. Thanks for reading. 💕

Couples. Romantic and/or sexual partners who have an understanding of a mutually-agreed upon level of commitment to one another and their relationship. Frequent celebrators of special occasions.

"A team-- a group; group of the two of us." A couple.

Special occasions. Notable life events celebrating milestones and past days significant to a couple's relationship.

"For special occasions." Why Aziraphale bought one dozen cases (144 bottles) of Chateauneuf-de-Pape in 1921, as he either tells or reminds Crowley on the walk to the bookshop in 2008. Only "a few bottles" were still left at that time, according to Aziraphale, after 87 years of Crowley and Aziraphale celebrating special occasions enough times as an unofficial couple between 1921 and 2008 to have drank almost 144 bottles of the wine they only drink on special occasions.

Wedding anniversary. A special occasion; the "big one" of a married couple's special occasions. Celebrated annually by married couples as a romantic day that honors their commitment to one another. In S2, the day of The Meeting Ball is the night that Armageddon: Round Two gets underway. It is also the wedding anniversary of...

Mutt and his beloved spouse. The lovely magician who owns Goldstone's Magic Shop in 2023 and his beloved spouse, who is dry-witted, trans and had on a dress the color of Crowley's eyes at The Ball. Paralleling characters to Crowley and Aziraphale.

Anniversary. For partners who are not married, usually celebrated as a day of significance in their romantic relationship, chosen for its importance to them. Almost always related to a "first" in the relationship, like the day they first met or on which they had a first date.

"This is The Big One, Crowley..." What Satan (while impersonating the voice of Freddie Mercury) said to Crowley about Armageddon while assaulting him in 2008, on the night Armageddon: Round One began. Crowley was supposed to be having dinner with Aziraphale at the time.

The 1.01 sushi scene. Our re-introduction to Aziraphale in 2008. A series of indicators that we learn throughout the course of the season teach us that Crowley was supposed to be with Aziraphale in the Japanese restaurant on this night before he was delayed by Hell, assaulted by Satan, and forced into helping to start Armageddon.

Various scenes in S1 show us that Crowley always comes up on the same side of Aziraphale if he is approaching him from behind when meeting him but we don't yet know that in the first scenes of 1.01. As a result, we might not immediately realize that the reason why Aziraphale opens his eyes and looks to his left after hearing a miracle chime in this scene is because he expected that it was Crowley arriving to meet him after having been running late. In reality, it turned out to be Gabriel on his right-- which Aziraphale first sees in a mirror and which will be mirrored in additional scenes in the show (Crowley dragged to Hell in 1827 and the Gabriel statue on the other side of Aziraphale, etc.). Dialogue from the scene set the next day in St. James' Park that we will look at later on in the meta also confirms that Crowley was supposed to be with Aziraphale in the 1.01 sushi scene.

The sequence of scenes at the start of the 2008 minisode also sets this up by giving us Crowley alone first and letting us revel a bit in how fun he is and like him even more. The contrast with Hastur and Ligur establishes for us that Crowley is about a trillion times smarter and more enlightened than these guys. It's the second scene with Satan, though, that exists to show us that while some of the demons are just idiots, demonic life for Crowley is actual hell.

The "Bohemian Rhapsody" he so endearingly rolled up blaring in The Bentley comes back and now takes on a nightmarish tone as Crowley receives instructions from Satan while driving The Bentley and we learn that Satan can possess him at will and Crowley's sunglasses-- even in the dead of night while driving alone-- start to make more sense. They're a defense mechanism but he's actually defenseless in the face of this threat. It's from watching Satan get in-- through the radio, taking over the music, speaking through the voice of a non-evil entity, jumping through the air and through Crowley's sunglasses through his eyes and into his mind and rendering his body immobile while he's driving The Bentley-- that we are taught the core of what it means to be a demon in Good Omens.

The demons belong to Satan, in Satan's view. They are part of his collective of souls who exist to serve him. They are not individual people existing independent of him. There is no such thing as bodily autonomy in Hell.

What Satan does to Crowley in 1.01 is a metaphor for sexual assault. It's a forcible attack on his body against his will and without his consent. Though the scene is mercifully short, we are left with the awareness that it is short for reasons of the plot in this instance-- because Armageddon is beginning and the purpose of the attack in this moment is to give Crowley directions on delivering the antichrist baby. The scene, though, shows us that Satan can do this to Crowley whenever he wants and Crowley-- an otherwise very powerful being-- has no known defense against it. Crowley is unsurprised by it and that, plus all his various defensive layers already in existence in 1.01, show that it has happened before. Crowley has been on Earth for 6,004 years in 2008 and the implication here is that these assaults have been happening periodically the entire time and are among the issues most responsible for the PTSD symptoms he shows throughout the show.

It's off of this assault, though, that we segue into our re-introduction scenes of Aziraphale in the present and they are, at the start, the exact opposite of this nightmare that Crowley is living. As Crowley is attacked in his car on a dark road alone at night and then has to narrowly avoiding killing a man in an oncoming truck, we move over to Aziraphale's world, not yet realizing that this is the world that Crowley lives in when he can get away from Hell-- that it is actually their world together.

Aziraphale is presented with the sushi from his friend who has prepared it specially for him and we listen to Aziraphale thank him. The Italian of "Bohemian Rhapsody" (symbolic in this moment of Dante's Inferno and Hell) gives way to Aziraphale speaking Japanese (symbolic of mindful living.) The tone is all kind and gentle-- respectful and peaceful. We then get what is, really, the exact opposite of what just happened to Crowley, which is Aziraphale taking a slow breath with his eyes closed, inhaling the scents of the brine of the fish and vinegared rice and the herbs, and centering himself in the present moment as part of the experience of enjoying his meal.

The immediate contrast is drawn between Satan-- Crowley's rapist, who terrorizes him-- and Aziraphale-- Crowley's partner, who loves him, and with whom he has the kind of consensual, mindful, sensual experiences he was supposed to be getting up to on this night when Armageddon began instead.

In S2, the importance of the sushi scene from 1.01 returns as it is mirrored during the attack on the bookshop. Once again, Crowley is away from Aziraphale when he should have been there by that point and Aziraphale is worried about him. Present instead is, once again, Gabriel. This time, Gabriel has undergone a bit of a Jim journey. (Aziraphale offering him hot chocolate instead of tea in 2.01 was also set up by the sushi scene, as it's off of Gabriel being grossed out by the "rose matter" tea, showing again how important the scene is.) In S2, Gabriel is with Aziraphale again, this time pushed back further into the bookshop, and where are they in the bookshop-that-represents-Aziraphale during the sushi scene mirror? They're upstairs, on the landing.

Specifically, they're just inside the top of the stairs in front of a room, the door to which we are shown several times in S2 but which we have not yet seen open.

We have gone into the room next door to it-- that's the guest bedroom, where Gabriel stayed during the season. By process of elimination and out of an idea of convenience here, the room we haven't been inside of that is located at the very top of the stairs is almost certainly Aziraphale's bedroom. So, we've gone from S1 and having Gabriel show up unexpectedly while Aziraphale mistook him for Crowley while he and Crowley were supposed to be having one of their sexy meals together to S2 and Gabriel now there in the mirror scene in front of their bedroom, drawing a bit of a correlation between what these two scenes are both about.

There's also something symbolic to the idea that S2 uses invitations and doors and rooms in the bookshop to symbolize Aziraphale himself and who he lets in and whose voices he is, for better or worse, listening to at different times-- with his mental health crisis being symbolized by the bookshop being essentially overrun to a point that anyone can now get in. The one room that is shown to us but the door to which never is opened in S2 is the bedroom door. The bookshop can get overrun and others can get deeper into it than we've seen before-- demons in the living room, Maggie and Nina and Gabriel upstairs and in the back kitchen table area like the family they've become-- but the bedroom door stays closed because only Crowley and Aziraphale are allowed in there. No one but them can open the door. Metaphorically-speaking... and probably literally as well.

As the sushi scene is paralleled in S2, we get Shax there bullying Aziraphale. Shax is jealous of Aziraphale and his relationship with Crowley and she also fails to understand it because she sees Crowley as a demon like her and presumes he's as dark as she is, having no idea that Crowley's demonic schtick is an act to survive. She gives voice to these questions (and to Aziraphale's most illogical self-doubts-- but self-doubt is never logical...) when she asks:

"Aziraphale, what *are* you? Crowley's emotional support angel? The softest touch? The one who went native? Do you need more big, human meals, Aziraphale? Shall we send up *the sushi*?"

Shax is actually doing something here, language-wise, that the show first did with Hastur in 1.01, and that's making them both useful idiots when it comes to language. Remember Hastur's mistranslation of "ciao" as Crowley leaves the graveyard with the baby? What Crowley said was, as we know, Italian-- Hastur got that bit correct-- but instead of translating it in his mind as meaning the "hello"/"goodbye" that "ciao" means in Italian, he confused it with its homophone of "chow", which he said "means 'food'." It does but in an informal way or in reference to food given to animals.

This is darkly ironic in the scene because of where Crowley is headed in the next scene-- and where he's supposed to be during both scenes. He's supposed to be "chowing down"/having food-- having dinner-- with Aziraphale and food is, as we'll learn over the course of the 2008 minisode, euphemistic for sex in Ineffable Husbands Speak and symbolic in relation to it in the show itself overall. Instead, Hastur isn't entirely wrong when he translates "ciao" as "chow"-- and he might have done so unconsciously in his mind because he knows Satan is going to contact Crowley with instructions soon. He sees Crowley as "chow"-- in the sense of food fed to the animal that is Satan.

In 2.06, while Crowley is taking Maggie and Nina to safety outside the bookshop, Satan is mentioned when Shax demands that Gabriel and Beez be given to her to take "as gifts for Our Master Satan." Dagon-- Head of the Dark Council and not known for mincing her words-- replies that Satan "wouldn't want them... maybe as hors d'oeuvres." Not a single person in the room-- which contains almost every major non-human character in the show shy of Crowley-- disagrees with this assessment. Rape is not about sex-- it's about power-- but in a show that uses food as euphemistic for sex on several different levels, Dagon's comment is chilling.

It not only takes the attacks on Crowley that are already a metaphor for sexual assault and codes them through food in such a way that the feeling you get from the 1.01 Satan scene-- how it comes with an implication that the assaults aren't always a delivery of instructions-- is correct and that, unsurprisingly, Satan is a rapist in every way possible, but it also sees someone who would know in Dagon state that Satan would not actually care that much about Gabriel and Beez. He'd rape 'em, sure, is what Dagon is saying. He's Satan. But they would be just hors d'oeuvres. They're not who he's really fixated on.

The Grand Duke of Hell who betrayed him and their former Supreme Archangel partner are not interesting to Satan is Dagon's statement and not a single person in the room challenges that. No one says anything about it and the scene is deliberately structured so Crowley is not in the room when it's said to create this reaction in the others... the implications of which are just horrible where Crowley is concerned.

Back to Shax in the bookshop attack scene...

Shax parallels Hastur here because they are using her lack of language skills to highlight something to us by what it is that she doesn't understand. Much like with Hastur unintentionally spelling out what's really going on through mistranslations of words, Shax is trying to bully Aziraphale and she's tossing insults at him that are, actually, in the alternative meanings of what she's saying, the answers to the very questions she's been asking.

"Aziraphale, what *are* you? Crowley's emotional support angel? The softest touch?..." In insulting Aziraphale, Shax is using Crowley's mental health issues as a way of insulting both of them here, which shows how Hell obviously isn't exactly the most trauma-aware place. She's obviously saying that Crowley is comparable in mental health issues to humans (whom the demons see as beneath them) who have a need for emotional support animals. Like Hastur with the "chow", there's an animal comparison being drawn beneath the words used here but instead of the ominous lead-in to Crowley being attacked in 1.01, in S2, we have it about Crowley and Aziraphale, not Crowley and Satan.

So, Shax is calling Aziraphale Crowley's pet, right? And then she calls Aziraphale "the softest touch", which is a phrase meaning someone who is really gullible. What Shax doesn't realize is that the other, human-derived meanings of what she just called Aziraphale are the answer to the question of what Aziraphale is to Crowley.

In British slang, "pet" is a term of endearment. To pet someone is to touch and kiss in a way meant to be sexually arousing-- as in, "heavy petting."

The softest touch. This is, quite literally, the definition of a caress.

In S2, Aziraphale pats his and Crowley's pet-- The Bentley-- but he pets Crowley. The only time he tries to actually pet The Bentley is when he's semi-jokingly making it a sexual metaphor for Crowley. It underscores that Shax is almost there in getting it-- she's just not quite understanding the meaning of her own words-- which are words that, like Hastur's ciao/chow moment, exist to tell *us* something in how we look at them more than to tell the character speaking something.

In effect, we get a whole scene in S2 that parallels the 1.01 sushi scene by defining some more what it's really all about through Shax not quite fully getting it. What is Aziraphale to Crowley? is her question and the answer is the softest touch, just in the other meaning from the way that Shax says it. Aziraphale is kind to Crowley and gentle with him. He's the mindful sushi night in the face of the horror chow of Hell. They love each other. It's soft and sweet and that's why Shax has trouble understanding it-- it flies in the face of what she thinks the demon Crowley would want because of the reputation Crowley has sold everyone on regarding who he is, which isn't who he really is at all.

"The one who went native. Do you need more big, human meals, Aziraphale? Shall we send up *the sushi*?" Aziraphale is the angel who "went native"-- he lives a mostly human existence with Crowley alongside the humans. Shax clearly doesn't eat that much as no one has ever called sushi a "big meal" lol but besides that bit of humor aimed our way, this is more tying of food to sex. Aziraphale likes food and he likes sex and in Ineffable Husbands Speak-- which Shax does not speak-- food is euphemistic for sex. What's unnerving about this scene in this moment is that it plays like the later scene between Maggie and Shax does-- as if Shax is reading the thoughts of the character she's bullying and lobbying them back at her. She might well be doing this here and that's why the sushi comes up-- Aziraphale is thinking about it because Crowley should be here and isn't and Gabriel is right near him instead and it reminds him of 2008. (This wouldn't be the only callback to S1 in this sequence, either; there's Aziraphale explaining the fire extinguishers to Nina not that long after this.) Either way, it's writing designed to directly correlate this part of the bookshop attack with the 1.01 sushi scene to further underline what the 1.01 scene is about.

Okay, so, let's look then at why we're so into repeating bits of this sushi restaurant scene in GO and what it tells us about Crowley and Aziraphale's story by what other scenes it ties to...

As the 1.01 episode continues, we get another scene pretty soon after the sushi scene which adds another layer to this by recontextualizing our understanding of the sushi scene-- that's their lunch at The Ritz the next day, in which we learn that Crowley is rather into watching Aziraphale eat and Aziraphale loves it. This then helps to explain Aziraphale's look in the sushi scene when he turns to look in the direction of where he thinks Crowley will be on the left, before it clicks that Crowley is not there and he sees, instead, Gabriel on his right via the mirror on the wall.

Aziraphale hears the chime with his eyes still closed. His eyes are then still on the food when he reopens them and he hasn't had time to see that Crowley is not beside him before he turns in that direction and this is the expression on his face as he does:

That is a pretty sexy little look that was indisputably supposed to be given to Crowley...

In the later scene where they're at lunch at The Ritz, we come in on their meal at the end of it. Aziraphale is on the last forkful of his dessert and we get the idea of kinky lunch from what we see on the tail end of it. But before it? Back at the start of the episode, set the night before? We see that everything that happens the next day at The Ritz actually happens because they weren't able to be together the prior night. It will also help us to understand how Crowley knows about "the fascinating little restaurants where they know" Aziraphale in the St. James' Park scene.

The 1.01 sushi scene tells us that, by 2008, they sometimes sneak out to a quiet, dark place where they think they won't be seen to have dinner together.

What's most notable about the set of this scene in the sushi restaurant is the shocking brightness of one color in particular.

The scene leading into it, as we noted, is Satan's attack on Crowley in The Bentley and that scene is, appropriately, very dark. It's pitch black night outside and Crowley, in his perpetual black clothes, half-blends into the night around him. Flecks of grey and silver are the main sources of light in the scene. The same color scheme tips into the Aziraphale sushi restaurant scene-- with two exceptions. The silver grey remains (Gabriel) and so too does the thick, black darkness but there is more light in the restaurant and it shines over Aziraphale. He looks bright against the black darkness, even though he wears beige. He is the light that is missing from Crowley's scene. But that's not the shocking color to us in the scene. That's the one that saturates its way through the darkness around Aziraphale. That color is...

Pink. The color you get when you mix white (Aziraphale) into red (Crowley). Traditionally, a color of love, romance and health.

Pink plume. The energy field emanating from the bookshop when Crowley and Aziraphale performed a miracle together to protect Gabriel in 2.01. Also: part of Mrs. Sandwich's hair accessory during The Meeting Ball. Mrs. Sandwich represents sex and healthy communication in 'The Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Represent The Stuff of Life' thing the show has going on.

"In the pink." A phrase meaning "in good health."

1967. Flashback scene in the 1.03 Cold Open in which Aziraphale gives Crowley holy water and they discuss their relationship-- specifically, trying to be more openly together. The scene is drenched by the pink light from the sex shops (one called the "Love Shop") that were then in the spot where Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death (symbolic of freedom) is in S2.

Jane Austen. One of the most famous writers to ever live (sorry, Crowley, but she is lol.) Writer of romance novels. A human that both Crowley and Aziraphale knew in the early 1800s. As Aziraphale brings her up to Crowley while they are talking about romance, pink floods the frame through the clothes on the extras in the wider part of the shot besides him. Pink is also present throughout this scene in general, which already parallels 1967 via it being related to set up, The Dirty Donkey and Crowley's turtleneck.

Back to the pink-dipped sushi restaurant in 2008... what else do you notice about this scene that is familiar, now that you've seen all of S1?

Maybe that Aziraphale is actually sitting at a bar? And thought Crowley would meet him there, so they would be sitting at the bar together? Aziraphale also had just spoken at the start of the scene with the restaurant person on the other side of the counter. Where have we seen one of them doing something like that before?

That other rather fish-oriented scene: Rome. 41 A.D....

Rome. 41 A.D.. Aziraphale runs into Crowley in a tavern in Rome. Crowley is miserable and not having the best day of his demon life. Frustrated by the temptations he's been sent to perform for Hell that have him enabling horrible men in the Roman military, he's lonely, tired and grouchy. This initially was worsened by the arrival of Aziraphale, whom Crowley always loves to see but who, in that moment, was a reminder of how broken Crowley felt.

PTSD. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A psychological condition brought on as a result of experiencing the psychological shock of a traumatic event or events. Some symptoms of PTSD include disturbed sleep, difficulties feeling safe, difficulties trusting yourself and others, anxiety, depression, and intimacy issues.

"In the pink." Remember the phrase meaning "in good health'"? Not a lot of pink in the Rome scene... initially. 😉

"Salutaria." What Aziraphale says in toast as he and Crowley clink glasses. Means "to your health." Crowley clinked glasses but quickly looked away, leaving Aziraphale thrown in the moment as to why Crowley was not rejecting his presence entirely but seemed uneasy and was putting up some walls between them that he had not in this way up to this point.

So, why was Crowley doing that?

Anorgasmia. Modern, clinical umbrella term for all issues relating to disorders surrounding an individual's ability to orgasm. If physical or medicinal reasons are eliminated, however-- as they often are-- then anorgasmia is a psychological mind-body disconnect.

Not an arousal disorder. Sufferers of anorgasmia still experience desire, compounding the impact of the disorder.

Secondary anorgasmia/situational anorgasmia. The inability to orgasm unless under certain conditions, such as through self-stimulation (masturbation). The inability to enjoy partnered sex. Extremely common in rape/sexual assault survivors.

(Diagnosis for anorgasmia are related to biological sex but Crowley is able to switch that at will so he'd be both of these, which are fundamentally the same thing.)

Hot Water Boiler. Device which heats up water in a house or apartment. In S2, a metaphor for anorgasmia.

In S2, Shax is living in what used to be Crowley's apartment and asks him if he knows how to fix the hot water boiler, as it has "two yellow lights" and isn't working. The point is that this used to be Crowley's apartment. Crowley, in 2023, knows how to get beyond a bout of it. He's fixed his own metaphorical hot water boiler-- and also the literal one when he used to live in that apartment. And while he's being sarcastic because Shax won't stop hounding him and Aziraphale, he's also giving her the most sage advice he knows, as he has continuously been doing during the season. In this case, it's to self-love a bit (which is actually prescriptive for anorgasmia in our modern times as well.) That he does is suggestive of the prior issues with secondary/situational anorgasmia.

Alcohol (in Ineffable Husbands Speak). As we looked at in the Crepes meta: Surface layer: alcohol. Hidden language layer: Sex. Quite extraordinary amounts of alcohol. An extremely alcoholic breakfast at The Ritz.

Whiskey. Alcohol. What Crowley orders in a bar. Usually Talisker, which is a single-malt scotch. (Scotch being whiskey made in Scotland.)

Broken bottles of whiskey. What was in the case Crowley brought Mrs. H in 1941 at the start of the sexual metaphor that is The Bullet Catch.

Trauma-informed partner. Modern term for a romantic and/or sexual partner of a trauma survivor who is aware of the pervasive nature trauma can have on a person and who endeavors to provide a sense of safety-- physical, psychological and emotional-- for their partner and to create a relationship centered on healing and recovery, rather than one that causes further distress.

Frequently survivors of one or more forms of abuse themselves, as Aziraphale is. Not expected to be perfect but just to do their best by their partner.

Characteristics of trauma-informed relationships include kindness, empathy, mindfulness, gentleness, well-earned trust, a sense of playfulness, and a well-developed shared sense of humor. (Sound familiar? 😊)

The Bentley. Crowley's car and Linus blanket. As sexual metaphor, when Aziraphale is feeling cheeky: Crowley himself.

Driver's license. Documentation that must be obtained in order to operate a motor vehicle. Requires permission, experience, necessary skills, and willingness to learn. In London, not originally necessary to drive upon the invention of cars, until everyone realized what an absolute disaster that was. Aziraphale long ago passed his test and has had a driver's license since shortly after Crowley bought The Bentley. They did not require licenses at that time but always-eager-to-be-thorough Aziraphale made them give him a test to be sure he was truly qualified to drive.

As sexual innuendo: Crowley, we're absolutely ridiculous. You won't give up your car and I wall myself off in a fortress of books I can't part with but you've been "in my bookshop" and I've been "driving your Bentley" for an absurdly long amount of time. We even swapped bodies a few years ago. It might not actually be possible to be any more intimately familiar with a person than we are with one another and we both know I had these car keys the moment I asked for them so hand them over. No one was exactly a trauma-informed partner in those days but I was-- aren't I marvelous?😉I'll treat your car as gently as I treat you. Give me the keys or I will just keep going until I run out of car sex innuendo and I should warn you that I have lots more...

Trauma-informed partner. Aziraphale.

Mindfulness. A state of mind that focuses on being in the present moment by being conscious of one's thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. A state of the mind being connected to the body and experiencing the present moment consciously and fully. Frequently used to help combat PTSD, anxiety and depression. Also frequently used as a therapeutic intervention for assault survivors experiencing intimacy issues.

Aziraphale and Crowley smelling the magic shop in Season 2 and Aziraphale inhaling the scent of the sushi in 1.01 are both examples of mindfulness exercises. The sushi scene is tied to sex, as the food kinky thing is a form of foreplay, suggesting a focus on sexual mindfulness in bed.

Mind-body connection. What is in need of repair in sufferers of situational/secondary anorgasmia. Sexual assault causes the body to associate a loss of control with being under threat. Whereas people who have not experienced a violation of their bodily autonomy tend to respond to sexual stimulation with a response of pleasure, those who have been hurt have bodies that are wired to react to being touched or to feeling out of control as if they are under threat again, even if they are intellectually aware that the new situation they are in is not dangerous. What is arousing for others can cause a sense of anxiety instead of pleasure. There is also the risk of flashbacks to being attacked.

Healing the mind-body connection requires a trusted partner with whom the person suffering from anorgasmia feels safe and who is willing to help keep their partner in the present moment and help them "re-wire" and recover their body through new, positive experiences.

Asmodeus. The Demonic Prince of Lust. Crowley. A persona to have in Hell to give him big reputation that didn't involve him having to kill anybody and that also acted as a cover for his anorgasmia.

"Crowley." What Crowley asked Aziraphale to call him in 33 AD, just 8 years prior to Rome. An admittance of being mad about Aziraphale.

"What am I supposed to be, an aardvark?" In Rome, as Crowley grows nervous by this wine-drinking Aziraphale who also has nothing to do for the evening that has shown up in his world on a miserable day, he responds to Aziraphale's "still a demon, then?" nervous chatter with a line of his own, asking what else he was supposed to be? An aardvark? Of course, if Crowley was not a demon, being with Aziraphale would be easier and he wouldn't be in this mess in the first place but an aardvark is not just a random animal that Crowley thought up here.

Just prior to this moment, Aziraphale had approached him with "Crawley-- Crowley" and a soft smile. It wasn't actually a mistake on Aziraphale's part but a silent question: is it still alright to call you that? Thanks to S2 and the Job minisode we can see the 33 A.D. scene- in which Aziraphale learns of Crowley's new name-- in a different way. We see it as Crowley romancing Aziraphale a bit-- responding to Aziraphale being obviously a little jealous of Crowley's reputation as the wild Asmodeus with a whisper of how he'd changed his name to "Crowley"-- something that we know now that only Aziraphale understands. In Rome, eight years later, Aziraphale is asking by saying both names if that's still something Crowley feels-- and silently saying he hopes it is by subtly asking and by flirting with him a bit.

Crowley doesn't object to Aziraphale calling him "Crowley" and that encourages Aziraphale to join Crowley, who sends signals that he wants his company, even if he's grouchy. Maybe especially because he's grouchy. He can be grouchy around Aziraphale, who is his friend and will listen.

Aardvarks. Primarily eat ants and termites. In the insect metaphor in the show, humans are ants. (The "ants go marching" of The Flood scene.) Demons were hornets in this analogy but also flies and one could assume that termites might also be a good demonic insect analogy, as termites eat decaying plant material and demolish the dying down into the ground. Since food is sexual metaphor on Good Omens and living creatures are metaphorical in multiple ways, being an aardvark then is being someone who both fucks and kills other demons and humans. Being an aardvark is actually a good metaphor then for what's expected of Crowley in Hell and he obviously has some issues with it.

He doesn't want to kill anybody and he's sitting there wearing Roman military regalia, having been sent by Hell to facilitate some death and destruction in a way that he hasn't been able to Bildad his way out of this time. Aziraphale's presence is always welcome but Crowley's crabby in this moment because he knows Aziraphale is in a place by this point where he wants to sleep with him and they just ran into each other in a tavern and both clearly have the night free and now Crowley's got to decide if he's going to tell the angel or not that he's a disaster of an aardvark.

Aphrodisiacs. A substance purported to increase sexual desire. Named for the Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty, Aphrodite, who has been depicted since antiquity usually nude and on the shell of an oyster (or, occasionally, a scallop), as both are two of the oldest purported aphrodisiacs known to man.

Oysters. History's foremost food-related aphrodisiac... though that's not really proven. A few years ago, Italian and American scientists did a joint study to attempt to prove if oysters really did increase virility. What they found was a very minor increase in testosterone in men brought on by one of the compounds of oysters (which is also found in some other kinds of shellfish.) The difference was so small, though, that the scientists determined that an individual would have to consume a lot of oysters (like, a bucketload) to notice any significant difference. In other words?

Whether it works or not is, like with almost all aphrodisiacs, in the mind of the individual. If you believe it will work, it likely will. It's mind over matter. If you want it to work, it probably will. Thematically, an interesting thing to throw in a scene involving a character deciding he's in a place to work on overcoming psychologically-based anorgasmia.

The ancient Romans were obsessed with the oyster-- particularly the soldiers of the Roman military. Much of the cultural awareness of oysters as having a reputation today as being sex-boosting food is actually rooted to the beginnings of that trend in ancient Rome. Both Crowley and Aziraphale would have been aware of the reputation of the oyster in 41 A.D. and Crowley wearing military regalia might have been one of the reasons, in particular, that Aziraphale chose oysters as an euphemism to convey his meaning.

Oysters. Fish. To eat them, you have first got to get them out of their protective shells.

Adam and Eve. The first humans and the other inhabitants of The Garden of Eden. Parallels to Crowley and Aziraphale. Eve gave Adam food-- showed him the pleasures of eating the apple. It sent them on a path of sensual exploration and Adam, freed by Eve showing him food, gave her sex in return.

The other two in Eden at the time-- The Angel of the Eastern Gate and The Serpent of Eden-- are actually no different.

Crowley tempted Eve but Crowley also parallels Eve to Aziraphale's Adam. Crowley encouraged Aziraphale to try the ox ribs and unleashed the raging hedonist that Aziraphale can be. Rome in 41 A.D. is Aziraphale then realizing just how much they are Adam and Eve. (Something that they become aware of over time and is at the root of things like Crowley dryly saying that it's "time to leave The Garden" in 2019 in S1, when they leave a park to go have kinky lunch together.)

By Rome, Aziraphale is now a devoted gourmand. He also drinks now; he's tried wine at some point in the interim years between the Job minisode and this scene. (This is the first scene in which both Crowley and Aziraphale drink and the first time we see them share a toast-- something that becomes symbolic of them as lovers in scenes in the future, like its parallel scenes in 1941 and 2019-- furthering the suggestion of Rome as the start of their sexual relationship.)

Aziraphale might be in Rome on Heavenly assignment but that's not what he mentions to Crowley, if he is. Instead, he talks about Petronius, whom he assumes from Crowley's military clothes that Crowley will know and whom Crowley does. If referring to, as we suspect, Gaius Petronius Arbiter, then Aziraphale is referring to a being so queer even the historians can't get around acknowledging it-- a courtier who was the taste and style maker of the Roman empire, and who is believed to be the author of The Satyricon, which is basically the foundation of satire in literature but also famously contains a whole chunk of it that is just basically erotica.

Some details of Petronius' life are a little vague so Good Omens is exploiting the wiggle room here to suggest that he actually did own a restaurant. In reality, Petronius wrote in The Satyricon a description of ancient Roman feasts that have been seen as maybe barely satirical because of the whole bacchanalia of the period that Petronius was satirizing. So, by 41 A.D., Aziraphale is moving in wealthy human queer circles in ancient Rome and enjoying all of the pleasures life on Earth has to offer... and he's found Crowley alone in a tavern and is throwing as many of these things together in a sentence at one time as possible to convey an overall sense of would you like to join me?

The Job minisode has already happened. Aziraphale is more than aware that Crowley was enjoying watching him eat. They're both here with the night free and blending in amongst the crowds has never been easier than it was in highly-populated Rome. Aziraphale is used to picking up humans and it's different than it is with Crowley, who is quasi-immortal like he is and his friend and somebody for whom Aziraphale has feelings. There's also something funny about the fact that Crowley is in a (literally) hellish mood and Aziraphale is pretty undeterred and still goes for it. In attitude, Aziraphale is basically like You're in a terrible mood--you need to get laid, Crowley. Lucky I showed up, isn't it? 😂

Meanwhile, Crowley is fully aware of what Aziraphale is up to. He's known since he heard Aziraphale approaching him and has been mulling over how he's going to handle it. The grouchiness isn't just about his bad day-- it's anxiety manifesting as crabbiness. To his credit, Aziraphale seems to get that even before Crowley more specifically shares the source of that anxiety.

So, Aziraphale goes for it and how he does is to pick up on their way of speaking to one another euphemistically that they started in Job's courtyard and introduce food as a way of speaking about sex. This is already amusing in S1 but it's funny as fuck after S2 when we know that the ox ribs have already happened at this point and that that's why Aziraphale is going this route. Aziraphale's like how to see if Crowley wants to smash? Tell him I'm hungry wink wink... 😉

I would also like to point out that they are already in a tavern that sells food. In the wider shots of Crowley in the second half of the scene, a plate of food is on the table beside him. There are oysters *in this bar* lol. Oysters were not uncommon in ancient Rome by this point-- if this conversation were really entirely just about trying this particular kind of seafood, they could just order some from the woman who served Crowley his drink who is three feet away for the entire scene and try oysters right here.

By bringing up Petronius and another restaurant where they sell sexy fish, Aziraphale is laying down an ancient Roman, euphemistic equivalent of do you want to get out of here?

To tell Crowley that he [Aziraphale] hears that Petronius "does remarkable things *to oysters*." To ask Crowley to go to bed with him.

Specifically, to see if the food kinky Crowley wants to go with him to Petronius' new restaurant and try these oysters the human guys are so on about and then go back to where Aziraphale is staying and see if the oysters really do anything to their oysters.

With this one sentence, Aziraphale has just turned "oysters" into three specific, separate-but-interrelated things at once:

1) oysters are fish-- just the seafood itself-- as we're always also talking about the thing on the surface level as well in Ineffable Husbands Speak and this is no different. Petronius makes some yummy oysters, according to the restaurant reviews of ancient Rome, and his new restaurant is an opulent food orgasm of a place and Aziraphale correctly thinks that would be appealing to both of them. He loves to eat and Crowley loves to watch him eat and does Crowley want to go on a little date to do that-- just also with actual sex this time?

2) oysters are aphrodisiacs-- Aziraphale is bringing up the fact that everyone is talking about how eating oysters can increase your sexual desire and bring about more pleasure for you and your partner(s) in bed. Aphrodisiacs are evocative of partnered sex. Not that you can't take them for fun times on your own but most people do not so bringing them up then sets up the verbal italics of "to oysters" that lands Aziraphale's invitation, unintentionally, straight in the heart of Crowley's issues, because:

3) oysters are a partnered sex orgasm-- Aziraphale says he (Petronius) "does remarkable things to oysters" so Petronius makes delicious oysters, which are what you eat to increase sexual desire and therefore what apparently cause you to experience more pleasure for longer and to climax harder... the innuendo is that the oysters (the aphrodisiacs) do things to your oysters (your orgasm).

Surprise twist, Aziraphale...

Crowley has made sure it never occurs to anyone that he has problems in bed and that has included Aziraphale up to this point.

Crowley basically now has a couple of choices. He can gently rebuff Aziraphale's offer, hopefully without embarrassing him too much, and they can try to pretend this never happened, and then he knows that Aziraphale is probably never going to ask him again. Not an option. Who knows when else they might find each other with the night free like this again? and Crowley does want to try.

He can pretend there's nothing wrong with him and stress himself into a disaster, like he's probably tried to do with humans before but they die within a couple of decades and take the embarrassment with them but Aziraphale's going to live for ages, is really his only friend, and Crowley's in love with him. Crowley's self-sabotaging at times but he's also an optimist and a romantic, and it's those things that give him some hope that he might not be permanently broken.

Finally, there's that he can just tell Aziraphale the truth because, let's be real here, the angel wants to try it and like hell is Crowley saying no to that.

So, he doesn't.

(Note the red squiggles on his costume that look pink in the light and like a heart monitor jackhammering-- with anxiety, with arousal-- and the candle that burns a pink flame where the light hits the jug.)

"I've never eaten an oyster." Aziraphale has defined an oyster between them as an orgasm had during partnered sex and that is what Crowley is saying he's never had.

He's also possibly saying that he has never eaten an actual oyster-the-seafood, because even though they were pretty common in Rome in the era, Crowley eats less than Aziraphale does, apparently hasn't been in Rome that long, and has had, until this moment, no reason to try the fish everyone is throwing back to try to increase their sexy times as Crowley's just been avoiding any sexual situation like the plague.

This is both a leap of faith on Crowley's part and a moment indicative of just how much he trusts Aziraphale. He needs every other living being to believe he's Asmodeus but Aziraphale can have the real, unvarnished truth because Aziraphale is the only person Crowley trusts not to hurt him. He knows Aziraphale can keep his secrets and that they have their own private world where vulnerability is allowed. He knows that Aziraphale is his friend beyond anything else.

This is telling Aziraphale that he'd like to try but he's kind of a mess. He doesn't want Aziraphale to feel like it's his fault if this doesn't work and he wants him to know what he's getting into. Crowley has long harbored a suspicion, though, that it would be different with Aziraphale, which is also why he wants to give it a try. If the angel can't help him rewire himself here, no one can.

Emphasizing this is Aziraphale's reaction. If they had been talking about pizza, maybe this reaction would have fit lol but it's clearly not a reaction to learning that Crowley has never consumed one particular kind of squiggly, hard-to-eat, honestly not that great seafood. It's a reaction much more befitting learning Crowley has not experienced something far more delicious and life-affirming than actual oysters-the-seafood.

"Oh-- well, let me tempt you to--" Just consider this moment from Aziraphale's perspective for a minute...

Serpent of Eden Crowley? He is literally the spark that lit the flame of all of humanity here. By tempting Eve into free thought and sensual pleasure, he also empowered her into teaching Adam these things. As a result, Crowley is basically responsible for sex on Earth-- for all of its history. If you live in the Good Omens universe and you've ever had an independent thought, a sensuous experience, or an orgasm, you owe Crowley a thank you note.😂Every play Aziraphale has ever seen, every meal he's ever enjoyed, every human he's ever taken to bed-- all of those experiences are indirectly because of Crowley.

Aziraphale has wanted him for quite literally ever. He compares everyone else to him. No one else has ever made him feel like this. He knows they're attracted to each other but he never felt like he knew what, if anything, he had to offer Crowley. The hottest being he'd ever seen freed him from the prison of his own repression here-- what could he ever give Crowley that was worth something like that? How do you learn together and try new things and adventure together with someone who seems like they're leap years ahead of you and know all the things it took you a long time to find out?

It's at "I've never eaten an oyster" that Aziraphale realizes that the being who freed everyone else got left behind and Aziraphale can fix that. He is good at burning holes in prison walls. Protection and arming others against threats to them and healing and kindness-- that's what he does. He's been here thinking for ages that Crowley would never need anything from him that he knew how to give like this but now he sees it differently. They've shown each other already by this point that they're good at being partners but this one aspect of it always felt to Aziraphale like it would be imbalanced. In Rome, he realizes that it isn't.

Aziraphale doesn't have the vocabulary we have today for these sort of issues and Rome wasn't exactly a bastion of trauma-informed sex lol but he didn't need any of that because he's intuitively good at this. He already knows that it will be fine because Crowley doesn't know it yet but he effectively already told him that it will-- by telling him in the first place. Aziraphale knows that trust and desire are what's needed and that they have those in spades. All he really has to do here is help Crowley relax and get out of his head.

Or, as Aziraphale will put it during the 1941 sexual metaphor that is The Bullet Catch plot: "You do the shooting. I'll do all the hard bits."

What gets Crowley's attention in Rome is how utterly confident Aziraphale is. How empathetic but unpitying. Aziraphale doesn't hesitate and he trips over himself accepting the challenge-- which is awfully cute-- but it's that Aziraphale doesn't treat him like he's broken or seem to see this as daunting that works for Crowley. There is a lot of internalized shame and fear and pain associated with anorgasmia and Crowley has been stewing in this for a very long time up until Rome so for Aziraphale's response to be not dismissive of it but, instead, reassuring, was exactly what Crowley needed. Aziraphale's whole attitude is oh ok no problem should we get going now or..? While he was not happy about Crowley having had difficult experiences before because he doesn't like to think of him in pain, he was really into the idea of Crowley thinking it could be different with him.

Aziraphale really, really, really likes being the person Crowley let in enough for this. Pardon the Crowley pun here but Aziraphale has never stopped crowing about it between them in thousands of years and if Crowley weren't besotted with him, he would have murdered him over it by now. (See: an example in 1941 that we'll look at near the end of this meta and "I had to miracle in the cherries" in Good Omens: Lockdown.)

"No, that's... that's your job. Isn't it?" Aziraphale's use of "tempt" to offer Crowley sex is then something of a joke between them because neither of them are tempting each other in a demonic sense of the word at any time. They find each other tempting though, in the sense that they find each other attractive. To use "tempt" with one another is just to ask each other if they are in the mood for something, not to influence the other into doing anything ("tempt you to a spot of lunch?" and "temptation accomplished" in 2019.)

This is really established first in the Job minisode, chronologically, as Crowley didn't so much tempt Aziraphale to try the ox ribs so much as he just offered them to him and Aziraphale decided to without influence. The same is true for Crowley choosing to try sex with Aziraphale in Rome-- he's really already chosen to by not saying no and that's all before Aziraphale's "well, let me tempt you--".

When Aziraphale replies to Crowley's reaction to the "tempt" line with "No, that's... that's your job. Isn't it?", Aziraphale is teasing him a bit. He's saying he sees through Crowley's massive control issues and that he gets him. You always have to be in control but you don't always want to be. Well, today's your lucky day, Bildad, because we're partners in this now.

Or, as it's known in 2023:

Flame burning pink as Crowley smiles a little for the first time in the scene:

"Oysters! Oranges!" What Juliet (the woman selling snacks) calls out as the opening dialogue in the 1601 scene to entice prospective buyers, the only one of which really is Aziraphale. Oysters-- aphrodisiacs. Oranges-- cinematic symbol of death. Aziraphale chooses...

"Some grapes please! They look scrummy." Grapes. Fermented grapes are wine. Wine is alcohol. Alcohol is sex. We haven't a need for oysters anymore and we shun symbolic death in favor of the little death. The grapes look "scrummy", shortened version of "scrumptious", meaning both "delicious" in food terms and "sexy enough to eat" in people terms. Aziraphale eats them in front of Crowley during the scene.

Oysters. What Crowley and Aziraphale had in ancient Rome.

Oysters. What Crowley and Aziraphale had in ancient Rome.

Oysters (in Ineffable Husbands Speak). Both an aphrodisiac and an orgasm, but...

...since they don't want to bring up anorgasmia every time they're flirting or talking about sex for the rest of their very long lives... and since oysters on their own are really hard to work frequently into conversation and would get a bit old pretty quickly, they need another word.

So, based on what we've seen in the series, it evolved into...

Oysters = Fish.

Fish live in the ocean, amongst other sea creatures.

Fish & sea creatures (in Ineffable Husbands Speak). An orgasm.

Anything related to the ocean (in Ineffable Husbands Speak). A metaphor for sex.

If it is in or lives in water, it's prime material for climatic innuendo. If it has multiple meanings in English? It will be used frequently as part of wordplay. If it pertains to the ocean or lends itself to destructive adjectives (shipwrecks, sea monsters, bubbling seas and rising waves), it will absolutely be a sexual metaphor at some point.

Such as...

Wahoo. A kind of fish. Also: an exclamation of joy. For obvious reasons, Crowley and Aziraphale's favorite fish joke.

In 1941, Aziraphale seeks feedback in the dressing room on their sexual metaphor Bullet Catch performance-- that they are both more than aware of-- and Crowley agrees that it went well and dryly suggests they "chalk up a win for the side of the angel", turning the common phrase that is usually "...side of the angels" singular to reflect only Aziraphale, who is over the moon that Crowley enjoyed it and cheekily replies "wahoo!" before their flirting is interrupted by Furfur.

Decades later, Crowley gives another stellar performance-- the full, epic saga of his M-25 Orbital Disruption-- to the joyless, miserable lot in Hell and concludes it with a line that he plans to tell Aziraphale later to make him laugh:

Carp. A kind of fish. Also means: to stand around and bitch. Aziraphale telling Crowley to stop standing around getting off on grouching and go get Maggie and Nina for The Meeting Ball in S2.

Gravlax in Dill Sauce. Cured salmon. This one is special and we'll look at it in the Dill Sauce meta about the St. James Park scene soon.

Ducks. Waterfowl. Aquatic birds. This is long enough. 😂 They are a whole separate meta.

Pickled herring. A kind of fish, cured in salt. What was dumped out of the barrel by Elspeth in The Resurrectionist minisode so she could use the barrel to transport her corpse. Crowley and Aziraphale spend half the minisode dragging around a barrel that should contain fish (the little death) but actually contains a corpse (actual death)-- foreshadowing the fact that their date will end with Crowley dragged to Hell and the start of the holy water arc of misery for them.

Red herring. A dry, smoked fish that turns red as it is smoked (ooh la la...) 😉 Also: A literary device, in which something is established with the intent of it distracting the audience from something else in the story. Elspeth and her pickled herring barrel are a red herring that changes The Resurrectionist minisode story from what the audience thought it would be into what it is, distracting the audience from the fact that the story actually began with Crowley and Aziraphale meeting in a graveyard at midnight for... ah... reasons. Aziraphale also turned 'red'-- turned to Crowley's side-- during the course of the episode, even as his shot at getting him some "pickled herring" that evening went up in hellfire smoke.

"Sargeant Shadwell." The hilarious, Sean Connery-esque way that Crowley said Shadwell's name in 1967, made funnier by the fact that a shad is a type of fish... and part of the herring family and this scene itself is a red herring. It misleads the audience into thinking we have a whole new plot about Crowley leading a break in to a church that is rendered inert within a matter of minutes when Aziraphale gives Crowley holy water. Shadwell's name is basically 'Fishwell' and, for Madame Tracy's sake, I hope that's true and not ironically funny. Either way, doubtful that Crowley and Aziraphale haven't joked about his name before. Shad also phonetically sounds like 'shag', the British slang word for fucking, and Crowley's tone of voice in the scene had a ring of 'shag' connotation to it.

Kieler Sprotte/Kieler Sprotten. A German smoked herring dish. A hidden reference in the Baraqiel entry in 'The Demon's Guide to Angels...' book that Furfur had in 1941. Baraqiel is Crowley and the entry, based on what's in it, was written by Aziraphale. One of you requested a meta on Baraqiel so that's on deck for now.

Newt. A semi-aquatic salamander. They live in the water but only some of the time. Also: Newt Pulsifier, an extreme parallel of Crowley who breaks all technology he touches, loves his less-attractive-than-The-Bentley car, and falls for a being who has issues with the purpose they feel they were put into the world to fulfill. Newt gets "in the water," metaphorically-speaking, when he has sex for the first time in S1 with the Aziraphale-paralleling Anathema, which is another example of how he's a more extreme version of Crowley, whose parallel to Newt is Aziraphale helping him through his intimacy issues.

Flounder. A kind of fish. Also means: to struggle helplessly in water. "To flounder" is frequently confused with "to founder", which is wordplay intentionally being used by Aziraphale in the "Seeds of Destruction" scene in S1, which we'll look at in the requested Seeds meta soon.

Bananafish. A kind of fish. Also: the first two words of Aziraphale's magic words. Is it "bananafish" or is it "banana, fish"? It's a little unclear and possibly situational. It's also likely both and a reference to wordplay and sex via fish. "The Bananafish" is also a short story by J.D. Salinger about trauma, PTSD and suicide that correlates to S2 quite a bit but we can look at that in a more Aziraphale's-trauma-centric meta.

The 'drunk-in-the-bookshop' scene. Part of the 2008 minisode, in which Crowley and Aziraphale are drunk and talking on the surface about Armageddon but are actually flirting with each other using sea-related terminology to make some drunken sexual metaphors.

Whales and dolphins. Sea-dwelling mammals. Not fish but live like them, alongside them. Damn big brains. Whales, in particular, are their own metaphor in Good Omens-- above and beyond Ineffable Husbands Speak-- but, in this context, they are non-fish creatures that live in the ocean, so Crowley is equating himself and Aziraphale to whales and dolphins in the drunk-in-the-bookshop scene and calling Aziraphale smart and clever in doing so. He is too drunk to come up with how smart they are ("brains the size of... *gives up* damn big brains" lol). His point is that Aziraphale is so smart, which is so hot, and that's his point. Brain city, whales.

Off of this, a drunk Aziraphale has heard Crowley say "damn big brains" and is thinking you know what *else* is big, Crowley?

"Kraken! Oh, great, bigggggg bugger..." Totally plastered Aziraphale is undefeated at Completely Wasted Wordplay, though, and he has a mythical monster and a whole attempt at a sexual metaphor for Crowley here, thanks to whatever brain cells are still kicking around in his damn big whale brain. The Kraken is huge and we aren't just talking about smart anymore, nope... Adding to the humor is the use of 'bugger'-- The Kraken is a massive one and we're talking about both in size and in terms of quite extraordinary amounts of buggery that Aziraphale wants to get up to here...

Giant squid and octopi. Also not fish but live in the sea, much like the whales and dolphins that Crowley had just mentioned and probably one of the reasons why Aziraphale's mind then goes towards The Kraken.

The Kraken. Mythical sea monster from Norse mythology. The Kraken-- and sea monsters, in general-- are thought to be based on giant squid and/or octopi. Particularly before days when squid and octopi were understood, The Kraken was sometimes described as a "sea serpent". Crowley, in Aziraphale's sexual metaphor here, is The Kraken-- is the great, bigggg bugger who is:

"Supposed to rise up-- right up-- to the surface. At the end. When the sea boils." We're talking about Armageddon on the surface but we're talking about sex under the surface and The Kraken is a mythological being who does not exist, making this drunk conversation even funnier. Adam will manifest The Kraken into existence later on in the season-- but, prior to that, the actual Kraken was a myth. Aziraphale and Crowley both know that. Neither of them believe in The Kraken-the-sea-monster. Aziraphale is just using it as a joking sexual metaphor while they're drunk as all fuck to flirt with Crowley using their whole ocean-themed innuendo.

"The Kraken" is "supposed to rise up, right up, to the surface, at the end". The sea serpent going from the depths of the cold black sea to cresting the surface of the ocean at the end of days, which is Aziraphale using destructive sexual metaphor-- using disaster, death, apocalyptic terminology, etc. as a metaphor for sex. Armageddon is the end of days is a sexual climax. "The Kraken" rises to the surface of the ocean "at the end-- when the sea boils"-- when it becomes too hot and there's no other choice but for the sea serpent to come... to the surface. 😉

"There is a lot of 'underlying unspokenness' and it comes to the surface now and again." Michael Sheen quote describing the nature of Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship in S1 in the interview below. I'd bet serious cash he's specifically thinking about The Kraken scene.

Thanks to @procrastiel for showing me the interview.

"Well, that's mah point! Dolphins and whales-- whole sea bubbling-- hard to keep everybody from turning into bouilla--" Crowley's response to Aziraphale's The Kraken metaphor. Actually surprisingly witty at the start considering how drunk they are (it's their damn big whale brains hitting on something every few words lol.) It is, indeed, his point that Aziraphale is talking about-- his boiling point-- but Crowley uses "point" in the other meaning here as well (as in, "that's the point of what I was saying!").

"Whole sea bubbling-- hard to keep everybody from turning into bouilla--" Everybody, eh, Crowley? 😂I thought we were talking about fish being boiled in the end of days here? (Someone ought to get Crowley and Aziraphale to make videos explaining climate change lol.) These fish and dolphins and whales seem like they could be easily mistaken for people? Like, say, you and Aziraphale, hmm?When the whole sea gets bubbling and it's just too hot in here, it might, indeed, be hard to keep you both from turning into...

Bouillabaisse. A fish soup that is frequently referred to as a fish stew, which is what a drunk Crowley calls it. The dish is French and when Crowley is too drunk to get the word out, he keeps repeating the first half of it-- "bouilla"-- which comes from the French verb "bouillir", which means "to boil". He heard Aziraphale's "when the sea boils" and his mind took it to the fish joke of bouillabaisse. To boil is, of course, to cook something in very hot water.

Crowley is too drunk to get the word out in full and repeats the "boil" part of it, getting distracted at one point and calling Aziraphale "baby" while they make hilarious, drunk, kissy faces at one another, before redirecting it with "fish stew-- anyway! It's not their fault."

A bouillabaisse features at least two different kinds of fish cooked together and served alongside one another in the same bowl.

Bouillabaisse/A fish soup or stew (in Ineffable Husbands Speak). Climaxing together/simultaneous orgasm.

"Fish stew-- anyway! It's not their fault." The end of the 'bouillabaisse' portion of the scene and yes, it's not the fault of the actual fish that will be turned into bouillabaisse when the world ends but this is also Crowley thinking of Aziraphale's earlier "hereditary enemies" comment and saying again that it's not their fault, they didn't ask for this. Tossed drunkenly into this getting sloppy sexual metaphor, it's pretty funny as it's also saying wouldn't be their fault if they turn into bouillabaisse later as who could blame them? World ending, been waiting for days, bouilla bouilla baby...

Good thing they sobered up because they were one more bottle of Chateauneuf-de-Pape away from just speak-singing "Under the Sea" at one another. Even the sturgeon and the ray, angel! They get the urge and start to play! That's *mah point*... 😂

"Heaven will finally triumph over Hell." One of the coded things that Aziraphale said to Crowley in the 1.01 St. James Park scene. While the surface layer of this conversation is about Armageddon, they're actually talking on the hidden layer about having not been able to be together the prior night. The key bit to this that I'm mentioning here is the use of the word "triumph"...

Triumph. A triumph is obviously a great victory or success but the history of the word is interesting. It originally meant a victory parade-- a processional-- held for a victorious general upon his return to ancient Rome. It was exclusive to Rome for a time as a word and still is how historians refer to that type of processional.

By using "triumph" in the St. James' Park scene, Aziraphale correlates the would-be sushi night with Rome.

Sushi. Raw fish mixed into vinegared rice, along with other ingredients. What Crowley and Aziraphale usually go out for in the modern era on their unofficial anniversary, which is the date of the first time they had sex in ancient Rome.

1,967. The number of years between the first time Crowley and Aziraphale had sex and when they were trying to meet to celebrate that special occasion in 2008 in 1.01. Armageddon: Round One began on their 1,967th anniversary. A reference to:

The 1967 scene, in which they talk about their relationship, and "dine at The Ritz" is said.

41. The number of years between Aziraphale suggesting they could one day "dine at The Ritz" in 1967 and when they did for the first time in 2008. A reference to:

The 41 A.D. scene in Rome, which shows how they first became lovers.

Well, with one caveat...

Hellfire and Holy Water. Substances produced by the physical corporations of angels and demons which are lethal to one another's "opposite kind"/"enemy." Aziraphale's body can make Holy Water, which could liquidate Crowley into non-existence. Crowley's body can make Hellfire, which could burn Aziraphale into the same.

As such, they spent some time concerned that each other's, em, "hellfire" and "holy water" might be harmful to one another, until they disproved this theory. This historical HIV allegory is alluded to in the "angel-demon, probably explode" Discorporated!Aziraphale scene in S1 (to "explode" also meaning to "explode a theory"-- to disprove it) and also in this scene here, in The Big Damn Sexual Metaphor that is The Bullet Catch:

Aziraphale's dry "just aim for my mouth but shoot past my ear," right?

So, how did they figure out that they wouldn't kill each other?

Kingdom of Wessex. 597 AD. The Camelot scene. Crowley and Aziraphale cross paths in the time of King Arthur and are so damn over canceling each other out at work. After Aziraphale rebuffs Crowley's initial proposal of basically quiet quitting Heaven & Hell-- just doing the paperwork and phoning it in-- because he thinks Michael will figure it out (not because he doesn't want to lol), the two part the scene without a resolution... but the 1601 scene provides that resolution for us via the reveal of The Arrangement.

Back in 597 A.D., after the scene we saw, Crowley and Aziraphale got creative in trying to find a solution to their work woes and wound up experimenting with what they had been told by Heaven regarding what their capabilities were. They uncovered that Crowley could still do blessings and Aziraphale could do temptations. So long as they kept pulling power from their respective head offices, it didn't matter what type of miracle they did and no one in Heaven or Hell figured it out. This then caused them to also realize that if they were biologically similar enough to be able to do the same miracles, then odds were high that they actually wouldn't hurt one another if they had more expansive sex and they decided to try it. They're both still here so obviously the end result was nothing but wahoo. What else is suggestive of this besides the already mentioned scenes? This one, in 1941:

Excalibur. King Arthur's sword. Excalibur's Chest. The famous swords-in-the-box magic trick, on sale at Goldstone's in 1941. Swords are as much sexual metaphor as guns. Note what's between them in the magic shop in 1941 when they agree to perform The Bullet Catch together that night, after a performance by The Ladies of Camelot:

This is part of the reason why they also use performing miracles as innuendo-- besides the fact that there is just a lot of material there lol. It's because it took them 556 years after Rome but they happened into figuring out Heaven's big secret and it freed them to boff each other senseless for the last *maths* 1,426 years as of S2 lol so it's kind of irresistible. An example is Aziraphale in S2 with "the 25 Lazari miracle you and I performed together the other night" which is on the surface, sure, about the miracle they did together to protect Gabriel but which Aziraphale makes actually sound like what they got up to the other night, probably the one before Gabriel arrived. He's talking about Muriel there for the Gabriel miracle but he's saying it with a tone of: I suspect that the angel is here to verify the miracle that was Sunday night. I'd imagine alarm bells must have been ringing in Heaven constantly since. You and I raised the damn dead, old serpent...

The Bullet Catch. A sexual metaphor for both "firsts"-- 41 A.D./Rome and 597 A.D./Kingdom of Wessex-- mashed together because they were similar... but also a metaphor for Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship overall.

The Bullet Catch requires them to trust one another and be vulnerable with one another. It's only possible because of how much they trust in and care for one another. Crowley's ability to fire the gun in a way that won't kill Aziraphale-- which Aziraphale is trusting him to do-- means that Crowley has to trust himself to do it. He has to believe himself capable of it and that he can relax enough to do it. He only believes this because Aziraphale believes it about him and makes him feel safe enough to focus. Aziraphale's trust in him allows Crowley to trust both himself and Aziraphale while Aziraphale's trust in Crowley allows him to let Crowley in enough to let him see his insecurities and be loved in spite of them, something Aziraphale's self-doubts and imposter syndrome keep him from doing with other people. Crowley knows he's imperfect and loves him madly anyway, something Aziraphale has trouble doing with himself and which no one else in Heaven ever has. Crowley's faith in and love for Aziraphale give Aziraphale the confidence to live more freely and feel like he's among the professional conjurers and not just on the outside of life. Their trust in one another helps them trust each other and that self-trust opens them up to experiences with each other that lead to ever-deepening trust of one another that lifts them both in a kind of feedback loop.

"Cheers for, um, getting me off the hook." Crowley thanking Aziraphale for helping him with the Mrs. H situation. He's more than aware that Aziraphale assisting with Crowley's broken alcohol bottles when alcohol = sex to them is more than a little metaphorical for their actual history and he chooses a fish reference as part of the thank you. "Cheers" is that British way of saying "thank you" but it's also obviously what people also say as a toast (which is also a word used to refer to warmed bread, which is also related to partnered sex in Ineffable Husbands Speak.) It's what Crowley actually says in 2019 at The Ritz at the end of S1 in the "Cheers. To the world." moment. Here, it's also a reference to the first time they did clink some glasses together in toast-- the "Salutaria" of ancient Rome. And what is this toast-y thank you of Crowley's for? For getting him off-- that is, for getting him "off the hook."

"Off the hook" refers to a caught fish being taken off the hook. It also became, over time, a phrase referring to communication, from the days of phones with cords. Leaving a phone "off the hook" meant that calls couldn't come through and communication couldn't be had. By 1941, the phrase would have roots in both origins and if we're talking about fish and telephones, we're talking about earlier in the evening in 1941 but we're also talking what it referenced to them symbolically about the past of their relationship. It is also absolutely why Aziraphale jumps on The Bullet Catch as his grand gesture once they get to the magic shop-- he sees a way to continue the metaphor that they're both more than aware of.

It also makes it a thousand times funnier then that poor Aziraphale essentially makes the same assumption about demonic life twice over a bazillion years apart. He thought The Bullet Catch would be a no-brainer, fun thing for them to do because he assumed that Crowley had fired a gun before, only to discover that this was now actually Rome all over again because while Aziraphale has a firearms license and a Derringer hidden in a hollowed-out book in the bookshop, this metaphor was suddenly way too on point because Crowley hasn't fired a gun with someone else around before-- in this case, at all, actually. His dry as all fuck "not as such" response to Aziraphale is well, we both know I've fired the metaphorical gun this rifle is standing in for here but yeah, no, I have no idea how to shoot this thing and I was going to miracle you safe and now those aren't working either so I have to do this for real and I'll just be over here trying not to have a panic attack...

Talking. Making sure the telephone is not off the hook is obviously always a good thing with everyone one trusts around them in life. In a relationship context, feeling safe enough to talk openly with your partner about things which make you feel vulnerable is the mark of a trust and what allows for deep intimacy. Talking in bed-- not just checking in with a partner but talking beyond that-- is a therapeutic intervention for anorgasmia, as it helps someone suffering from it to stay present in the moment. Tends to work in general but even more so if the person involved likes chat in bed as a whole, which a couple of scenes suggest Crowley does (the evolution of it into also some extra spicy chat in the "Seeds of Destruction" scene in S1 and his self-deprecating "you just say 'blah blah blah'" moment in S2.)

"We need to talk." What Crowley says in 1.01 when he calls Aziraphale from a corded public pay phone. This is the first time that Crowley and Aziraphale talk in the present, even if they're in separate locations, and the first time we've seen them interact since the opening scene of the show of them on the wall in Eden. We've spent the first part of the 2008 minisode re-introduced to them separately, not yet fully aware of how they were supposed to be together during it. Crowley doesn't wait until he's back in Mayfair after dropping off the antichrist baby-- he calls Aziraphale from the nearest payphone. He says "we need to talk", a phrase that is, for many, a relationship cliche that comes with a sense of the foreboding but we will learn from this scene also means other things to them.

For one thing, it's a code phrase that automatically triggers them to meet the next day at noon at St. James' Park. If one of them calls and says they "need to talk", they know that it means to meet the next day and when and where. This one they know a lot better than their four million alternative rendezvous spots, as we saw in that other scene in S1 when they set up meeting in the bandstand over the phone. Because it triggers St. James' Park, it means that the initial talk will be all coded in their hidden language, as that scene in 1.01 was, but that is also a form of communication for them and a kind that they actually enjoy.

For another thing, it means that they need to talk in general-- that something is happening and they need to talk about it, as was the case with Armageddon. At the time that they have this phone conversation, they don't yet know that one another already knows about Armageddon starting. We know from all the contextual clues we've already looked at here that they were supposed to be having dinner together earlier and that they also can't say that over the phone so when Aziraphale says: "Yes, I rather think we do. I assume this is about....?" there's a dryness to Aziraphale's tone because a form of talking was already on the menu. Sushi night is Rome and Rome had talking so, yeah, Aziraphale rather does think they need to talk-- to fuck-- and also Armageddon just started so they'll need to actually talk-talk about that as well at some point.

Crowley's response to what it's about, though, is destructive sexual metaphor. What do they need to talk about, on all levels, summed up by Crowley in a word?

"Armageddon." Armageddon: the actual end of the world and Armageddon: their big damn anniversary sex. The Big One. It's an apology of sorts for Hell detaining him and a request that they meet tomorrow.

The scene ends with Crowley placing the phone back on the hook-- indicative of understood, secure communication, the likes of which will be on display in the following scenes of the 2008 minisode.

Talking (in Ineffable Husbands Speak). Both verbal communication and physical communication. Talking means speaking. Talking also means making love.

"Trust me." What Aziraphale mouths at Crowley in 1941 to get him to be in the moment enough to be able to fire the gun. Absolutely one of the things Aziraphale said to Crowley to help him relax in Rome.

"I knew you'd come through for me. You always do."

Aziraphale pouring Crowley another glass of wine (and alcohol = sex) and the wordplay kink out here in full force as there are three levels of meaning happening at once. Surface level is about their success with The Bullet Catch earlier in the evening. Aziraphale knew Crowley would come through for him-- "come through" in the sense of he can always rely upon Crowley to be there for him when he needs him to be.

To "come through" something, though, is also to get through to the other side of something-- to have been able to pull through a difficult time or a struggle-- and refers to Crowley always coming out of dark periods and not giving up. But there's really also the third meaning, which is just the direct innuendo:

Some serious 'tone of voice' at play in this bit here performing a little magic trick and making that 'through' disappear right out of first sentence lol, turning it into: I knew you'd come for me. You always do.

Aziraphale's never going to stop being thrilled at their Roman triumph here and is still happy to remind Crowley in 1941 that they both know Aziraphale just does it for him.

"Well, you said 'trust me', so..."

Just prior to this, Aziraphale had been telling Crowley the magic words he silently said to keep the photo of them from Furfur (more fish-- "bananafish").

"Well, you said 'trust me'..." is Crowley saying "well, you said my magic words, so..." Aziraphale invoked Rome and talked to him so he got there.

"And you did." And Crowley did trust him, so it worked.

Aziraphale, though, is not just thinking about earlier that night in that moment in 1941 when he's staring off, reminiscing, before looking at Crowley like that...

...he's thinking about Rome.

"To drain the whole sea/Get something shiny..." Lyrics from Hozier's "Take Me to Church", pretty uniformly agreed as the most Crowley song that has ever Crowley songed, and which is on his official playlist in S2.

Pearls. The shiny things found in the sea. The jewels harvested from within the opened protective shell left behind by emerged oysters.

The original post referred to a bit in this one:

[doublel27]

I have to say, I really love the balance and parallels The Trainee is pulling off with their interns. Specifically though, the focus on BaMhee and Ryan as our central leads, because they directly parallel each other in this story.

Of our interns, BaMhee and Ryan are the ones that didn’t really mean to be there. BaMhee is there following Tae with no real aspirations of her own outside of being close to him. Ryan is there because his only friend encouraged him to try it and he got pulled into the wrong interview. They both show up relatively aimless and without a real objective which is contrasted by Tae and Pie who are so focused on their dreams/objectives they have a hard time seeing around their own plans. Pah has a dream, like Pie and Tae, but he lacks confidence in his ability to complete his dream, in the way that Ryan struggles with his confidence.

And throughout the story, they’ve allowed Ryan and BaMhee to start finding themselves within the story. Both have become more involved and valuable to production as time has gone on. In the early episodes, BaMhee was usually texting Tae and Ryan was often silent and confused. Now BaMhee takes initiative and makes her own decisions. Ryan has taken to coming up with his own ideas and sharing them, as well as getting involved in scene set up and being better at handling extras.

Both had very significant revelations in today’s episode about who they actually want to be or might be that were explored in 4/4.

BaMhee realized she was still in love with Tae and while she likes Judy, she doesn’t like her enough to want to have a full relationship. I was always worried that BaMhee liked the attention and the confidence of Judy because we didn’t get to see much of Judy beyond her work persona (unlike Jane who we saw behind the curtain much earlier). I actually loved BaMhee’s speech to Judy about how no one person is an exact fit (which is why you cannot survive on one relationship alone - romantic, familial, friend - a person needs multiple people) and how both Tae and Judy have things that fit her and things that don’t. But it’s the love and feelings that she has for Tae that make her want to try.

And I find this evolved for BaMhee because it often felt, in the early eps, that she just wanted to be with Tae to be with Tae and not for her relationship with Tae. Like it didn’t feel like a thing she was choosing so much as clinging to. I know she knows that because she told Tae flat out what she wants, which BaMhee never did before. She laid out she doesn’t want grand gestures or big surprises; she just wants time.

Directly paralleled with Ryan, who has now had Jane in his home, and is finding his footing. We saw it some the last two episodes, but this episode had Ryan contemplating his dreams, and who he is, and what persona he might wear, or not. I loved the throwback to the interview and him explaining while he didn’t want to be porridge with side dishes then, just a person in the background supporting, now he does want to be porridge with side dishes because he wants to figure out what fits him best. Who he wants to be as a grown up.

I love that Jane pointed out earlier in the episode that no “adult” has it all together and even asked if people need big dreams. His own contemplation of his dreams and where he is over where he thought he might be was a lovely reflection in the conversation with Ryan. It’s beautiful how they talk about these things.

And @lurkingshan has a beautiful post on BaMhee’s relationships with Judy and Tae respectively, and how Ryan and Jane are slower, but Ryan and Jane are also deeper. Judy didn’t really listen to BaMhee, not really, or ask probing questions. Judy and BaMhee both operated separately, sometimes in concert and sometimes in opposition, whereas Jane and Ryan communicate about ideas and feelings and dreams. Another contrast I’ve enjoyed was Jane let Ryan in first, with the feeding and bringing him home, before he crossed into Ryan’s world in episode 10. Which is a contrast to Judy showing up at BaMhee’s family restaurant (entering her space first) and having BaMhee feed her while we still know very little about Judy. Yes she talks BaMhee out, later, but she doesn’t ask first. Jane always asks. It’s a very cool contrast of how both of their relationships with their mentors have helped clarify things for BaMhee and Ryan in multiple ways, while being very different.

Anyway, while I am sad my sapphic plans didn’t pan out, I still love this show dearly and it’s so well written and beautifully shot.

[aho-dapa]

Side note, because I'm watching a video essay that's pretty much saying everything I've been thinking about about,

With sjm's writing, what separates it from a typical romantasy not to take seriously is that post ACOTAR, the author suddenly says to take it seriously.

Feyre's Calanmai Hall scene isn't about Feyre not wanting Tamlin's advances, but that she does, she's just doing the typical romantasy protag thing of rejecting what you really desire. Think about how this contrasts with Rhysand's scenes utm, she doesn't want them and its not given enough detail, but this changes after Feyre and Rhysand get together. For example, the CoN scene. The fucking mid air thing. The telepathy sexting that can happen at anytime without true consequence. Very exhibition. Much voyeur.

This is literally sjm's fantasies played out through Feyre and Rhysand, and even through Feyre and Tamlin.

Despite how much I like Tamlin, he only really became a truly nuanced character in hindsight for me because of sjm's unintentional manipulations of her own narrative. In ACOTAR, he's also built around Feyre the same way most characters are in the first book.

He is built to fit into Feyre, he's meant to parallel her acceptance of her own desires, her own beast through him, because submitting to him is submitting to herself. That's why Feyre's themes get mixed up post ACOTAR, she loses that beast like quality to become a star to suit Rhysand. And sjm brings that back in ACOWAR with the Mirror (although it doesn't hit like it once would have because instead to fitting Rhysand to Feyre, sjm wrote Feyre to fit Rhysand).

The thing that's frustrating is that sjm is the one that is saying these are just not her fantasies on page, she's the one that brought mental health into it, brought up abuse and neglect, and handled it all so poorly.

It's this thing where sjm still wants to have the upturned-nose high ground in her books, she wants to be right, she doesn't want Feyre to be questioned or truly be in the wrong because Feyre is her fantasy. sjm likely writes Tamlin to not like human slavery, not want to be like his father, and with a self sacrificing personality while keeping his beast like qualities for the steamy parts. Because he's written to have that middle ground most people looking for that fantasy can still enjoy while not being too disturbing for our modern sensibilities.

That's why some people not looking for this find Tamlin and Rhysand's actions strange and gross, but people who already indulge in those fantasies were okay with it. And there's even people who think that ACOTAR is too vanilla (me). Anyway.

Basically, ACOTAR is not meant to be taken seriously, its literally another romance book with a fancy (?) cover. Post ACOTAR is not tho, so sjm makes a big deal about taking it seriously because she wants that middle ground with Rhysand when honestly, Rhysand could have been a dark romance ML and no one would have batted an eye. But that wouldn't work for the precedent sjm established with the middle ground, she needs that 'he's feral and sexy and toes the consent line but it's fine because xyz' in her books, and that's why the fandom is so divided. We can't decide whether or not to take it seriously or not because sjm switched up.

Her fault as a writer is that she didn't do this well at all.

I mean, this is also coming from the same woman that briefly had another one of her characters entertain their sovereign right to colonization in goodwill, so. This woman should never have been taken seriously. Unfortunately, she insists upon herself. So in order to actually discuss these books, we have to take her silliness seriously.

(Which is why I stopped because it's an endless cycle of saying sjm wrote something silly and because she's saying it's serious, now we gotta be serious about bat birthing or whatever)

Never forget how I saw a bat get birthed just to actualize how stupid the *gets shot*