#but I'm not smart enough to know that lol

[vidavalor]

How do you think the Ineffable Husbands reacted to the 1914 Christmas Armistice?

Also, it is autumn now and very cloudy and soggy, so here is a seasonally-appropriate recipe: https://www.hairybikers.com/recipes/view/caramelised-apple-cheesecake

Aw, a recipe! You're lovely. 😊 That looks amazing!

I envy you being in one firm season over there. September is a transition month here in New England. Half-summer, half-fall. It's very strange, though, not terrible. One day is lemonade and watermelon and the next is where's my blanket? and I need an apple something and looking up what day Bake Off starts to air over here. Another week, though, and it'll be pretty much fall from here on out. Definitely going to make that cheesecake. 😊

I think they probably reacted to the Christmas Armistice the same way many of us do when we learn about it-- that it's both beautiful and morbidly depressing at once. It showed people coming together to express a sense of shared humanity but then they went back to killing one another afterwards. It wasn't a new story for Crowley and Aziraphale because they had seen that in people all throughout history but I'm sure they found the same mix of hopefulness and sadness in it that a lot of people do.

The one who understands what it takes to bring about peace now best in the series is actually Gabriel, imho. It's because he understood the deeper meaning of Sandalphon's words that Sandalphon didn't actually understand himself: "you can't have a war without war."

Some short thoughts on ties between war, frozen peas, and one of my favorite of Agnes Nutter's prophecies beneath the cut.

When Sandalphon said: "you can't have a war without war", what he meant was: "Look how clever I think I am to use this word twice in two ways in one sentence! You can't have a war without War: The Character! Mirelle Enos is playing a character that shares a name with large-scale killing and destruction and I pointed it out! I'm so smart!"

Gabriel, though, heard the potential of bigger ideas: "You can't have a war (a large-scale military conflict) without war (people willing to fight in a war and, also, a person's inner struggle leading them to be willing to fight in war)."

Meaning: A war can only happen if people are willing to fight the war.

Meaning: No soldiers, no war.

Gabriel knew Aziraphale heard it like that, too, and was like lol Aziraphale, this guy thinks he's a poet omg let me flatter him enough that he won't notice that I just tried to help you sell more erotica and didn't murder you for having a lover and then we'll get out of here...

Gabriel saying that he "might use that one day" about what Sandalphon says is a line that-- delightfully-- ages quite differently the more we get to know Gabriel.

We know he said it in that moment to make it sound like he was telling Sandalphon that what Sandalphon had said was just so profound that Gabriel was tempted to use it himself... but we also know that Gabriel is neither as dumb nor as vapid as he strategically lets people think he is and that he understood the deeper way of looking at what Sandalphon said more than Sandalphon did.

Looking back on it, it's Gabriel actually joking about mutinying in front of Heaven's most fervent Metatron-worshipping fascist in a way that is very much going over Sandalphon's head. Gabriel is all can't have a war without war-- yeah, true dat, Stasi a Fond. I'm slowly losing it over here and my favorite fantasy is just peacing out entirely of this whole 'Commander of The Heavenly Host' shit and wouldn't that really completely eff up The Ineffable Plan? Oh, my secret daydream... if only I could...

Then, what happens, though, by the end of S1?

Gabriel sees a kid do just that.

The eleven year old spawn of Satan is all yeah, no, you can't have a war without war. I don't want to start a war. I like the world. I've got enough on my plate dealing with my own life-- I don't want to rule over everyone. I want everyone to feel at peace and be happy and take care of each other.

Gabriel was freaked out because of the consequences of this and the fact that he, at the the time, thought The Metatron might kill him for failing to start Armageddon but, after the day was over and Gabriel had a moment to breathe and think about it, you can't tell me he didn't hear Adam saying that it was too much pressure to be in charge of every other living being in existence and he just wanted to chill with the people he liked and live his own life in peace and let everyone else do that, too and think to himself:

Yeah, kid. Me too.

The dude who is told he's responsible for everyone in Heaven and who sees angels falling as partly his fault and whom the humans deify and to whom they make statues was like fucking hell, the little antichrist brat was right.

He realized that it's not about Armageddon, it's about living and building a life until you have all the world you need. It's about what Crowley and Aziraphale have been trying to do and about what he and Beez were as well. Gabriel's proposal to Beez is a simple one:

What if, instead of Armageddon, there was no Armageddon?

What if, instead of war, there's no war?

So, he ended up fulfilling his own prophecy a bit when the one day came when he used what Sandalphon said-- just not in the way that Sandalphon meant it but in the way that Gabriel himself and Aziraphale heard it: you can't have a war without war... no war exists if enough people refuse to fight it.

That's the way to stop Armageddon.

Gabriel came to realize that the best thing he could do as a leader in Heaven and commander of its armed forces was to refuse to fight, come what may. He quits the army and defects to the embassy of the only independent country that exists in the supernatural world: the United States of Crowley and Aziraphale.

As Agnes said:

...the calm cometh when Redde and Whyte and Black and Pale approache to Peas is Our Professioune.

In this case: Redde/Red (Crowley), Whyte/White (Aziraphale), Black (Beez), Pale (Gabriel). To profess: to state. Peas = the talking of frozen peas because homophone: peace.

The calm cometh when Crowley, Aziraphale, Beez and Gabriel talk and each get closer to their own peace and to peace with one another and help each other to spread that mentality throughout all those willing in Heaven and Hell and Earth.

That's what you feed the other ducks-- your frozen peas. Your own stuff that is disturbing your own inner peace and creating inner wars and small-scale conflicts that, if left unchecked, can build into larger-scale ones.

If you break that shit down and talk about it, there needn't be any war.

Sometimes, it means shedding some armor, keeping an open mind, and admitting that you were wrong-- all things that can be difficult...

...especially for those are secretly tender-hearted but put up that armor to survive in worlds steeped in toxic masculinity...

...and, sometimes, it's maddening because people are scared and get set in their ways and do dumb shit and you have to upend power structures and reinforce more positive behaviors to get them to shut up long enough to start listening to one another...

...but the more who learn to unlearn the harmful stuff at the core of their own struggles and who open their minds up to listening to others, the more we're professing our peas to our fellow ducks and getting closer to peace within ourselves and within the world as a whole and that's what it's all about. It might always be approaching Peas is Our Professioune rather than a perfectly peaceful world but the point is the effort of the approach and to just keep making steady progress as much as we can while we're walking the Earth. After all...

[silenceoflink]

Science side of Tumblr: would a body in space still be present decades even centuries after death, considering there are no celestial objects nearby and all there is the rubble of their ship (same question applies to that)

[jesncin]

How are you two holding up now that they released the first two episodes of MAWS season 2? Also, I was wondering, what are your thoughts on Clark's characterization in this show?

What show? There hasn't been a Superman animated show in nearly t h i r t y y e a r s...

haha but for real, I am not watching MAWS Season 2 as it airs. My brain is an obsessive analytic (especially when something sucks) in that I'll spend too much time dissecting and complaining about it that I won't be able to focus. And I want to be in a good mood these coming months to promote my book (for AAPI heritage month and Pride month!! YEAA Gaysians it's our time!!), and I need to focus on work for my upcoming books too. I will watch MAWS S2 eventually, but I prefer to binge it all in one go instead of stretching my pain to a weekly basis with panic and dread, haha. Meanwhile I will be avoiding this show at all costs (which I'm very diligent at).

I think MAWS!Clark is a flanderized empty character with no solid ideals. "Nice guy who just wants to do the right thing" is obnoxiously redundant. Every classic superhero does this. Batman does good things for free too. "People are getting hurt! I don't wanna hurt anyone boo hoo" is such an easy moral high ground to have. It doesn't take advantage of Clark's lived experience to inform his heroic ideals. Any time Clark seems to have a statement like ep 6's "I have to believe this world can be a place where everyone is accepted. And I need to help it get there.", he contradicts it in the next episode with his actions (kicking a pleading Mxy out because a date with Lois is far more important than helping people who are "different" like him). In ep 4, Clark only does the right thing when Lois is insulted by Ivo. He's dumbed down from being an investigative reporter to being a himbo nice guy so Jimmy and Lois can be involved. What a hero. It's non-committal, empty, corporate, convenient.

[dreamyeyedrose]

listen if we brat summer our way out of fascism I'll fuckin take it

[seriousbrat]

hi i'm really curious to hear your opinion on this post: https://www.tumblr.com/oxydiane/693952155206500352/honestly-people-who-are-insufferable-about-the?source=share

well first off idk what they mean by people being insufferable about the prank exactly but i think it's just common sense to hold Sirius responsible for it. like it was his fault lol. I don't know if recognising that your favourite characters (and Sirius is one of mine) have flaws and did bad things sometimes counts as "crucifying" them rather than just enjoying the characters as they are, so I'm not sure what they're referring to. they do say in the tags that they don't think Sirius was in the right to be fair, but I think it's somewhat disingenuous to claim that Sirius wasn't expecting Snape to go down there when there's no evidence for that and even if true it wouldn't change the outcome.

I think there's a tendency in fandom to think you can only like characters if they're understood as 100% good flawless people whose every action is justified somehow. to me not only is this boring it's just kind of ridiculous. I think there's no way around the fact that Sirius did something that was objectively extremely fucked up not only to Snape but also to Remus, and then later displayed little remorse for it as far as we know ("‘I’m bored,’ said Sirius. ‘Wish it was full moon.’") and like... who cares? In the sense that to me, that just makes him an interesting character. And I don't think it erases his good qualities, it just makes him complex.

As far as Snape, like I said in another post I do think that he had some responsibility in the matter. And as a Snape fan this is worth discussing imo and the same exact thing goes for him as it does for Sirius. I think his obsession with discovering what the Marauders were up to went past the point of reasonable and that's why he was so easily manipulated into going down into the willow (for someone so intelligent, walking into an obvious trap is not his greatest moment lol) and we're shown in canon that this obsession was also interfering with his ability to be a good friend to Lily. If I absolutely had to choose then yeah, I think Sirius is more at fault than Sev but that's not as interesting to me as exploring the different motivations at play in the situation. Either way it's kind of a dishonest reading to try and make excuses or handwave rather than accepting that Everyone Is Terrible and just being okay with that.

I guess my point is, are you really a fan of a character if you have to overlook their flaws and weak moments in canon? it's a question worth asking. I love both Snape and Sirius because they have flaws but also admirable traits and I'm chillin feeling absolutely no need to defend anyone lol

edit- oh also I agree with your replies to that post, I've just seen them :)

[xenolinguistics-department]

just asked a guy i've been mutually crushing on for over a year when he will ask me out on a date and his face literally went 😳

[katiehwang]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KUDOU SHINICHI!!

So as a detco fan for uhhh about four years now, I had this thought about how... ordinary Shinichi is in detco universe where Japan had a bunch of genius teens and adults. Beika alone have Shinichi and Yuusaku, Sera and Mary, Amuro, Akai, Jodie, then we have those in other part of Japan like Heiji and Heizo, Kaito, Hakuba, and other competent officers outside of TMPD. Hundreds of new chapters in detco, everytime new characters were introduced, most of them were more intelligent than the average people. I've come to wonder why Shinichi was such a Big Deal. Why he's the Great Detective and saviour of the police? Lots of other people could have achieve that title, so does Shinichi only got there first because he's a detective nerd? The one who cannot get enough of deducing things? The one who have connection to police and thus can squeeze their way into most investigations?

Then I had this new thing in my life that is quite familiar to detective work (seriously they have all these cases and interrogation stuff going on) . At first I was excited to dive into it because it really is a similar setting to detco minus the crimes and murder, but then.... I got tired of it. I got bored, and most of the time came up blank even with all the clues in front of me because I'm so tired of it. There's also the fact that there is sooo many cases coming in and every one of them is different and certainly does not follow the textbook rules. There's also the knowledge that if we got to the wrong conclusion we will literally ruin someone's life and... Isn't that the most depressing thought? Everyone's pressuring you and you cannot fault them because it is a big responsibility.

So I guess now I understand why detco can have hundreds of geniuses but only one Heisei Holmes. Only one Kudou Shinichi. Because he's the one who put his heart into it. The one who have passion for the one truth. The one that got his ass kicked by that very same passion yet still pick himself up and continue to pursue his goal to put all criminals behind bars. The one that knows full well of the weight of his words and thus put so much care into it. The one that truly cares about every single person around him instead of seeing them as mere pieces in a puzzle (at least for this one, he learn it throughout the journey).

Most of the brilliant characters in DC can be a good and competent detective. Some of them already are. Most of them have kind hearts and don't want random people to be wrongfully accused. But intelligence and kindness alone are not enough to be a great detective because it's not just about piecing together puzzle or solving a code. You still have to interrogate people that don't want to be interrogated, talk to people with emotions ranging from devastated to murderous, with a certain time limit or else the evidences will disappear either naturally or planned. Isn't it stressful? Top it with the whole being-in-the-same-room-with-a-murderer... It's certainly hard to find anyone that will happily put themselves in those situations because if I were to be the smartest person in the world I sure would find better things to do.

[bigmeansweatydyke]

the long-ago aforementioned cool bi girl turned wannabe cathtradwife friend is currently getting flamed on facebook by friend and acquaintances. karma's a bitch ya shoulda known betta

[kerryweaverlesbian]

Can't I merely live. Must I yearn.

[adore-gregor]

study smart not hard (altough both is best actually) this saying is so true

[neverfittedin]

What I like about the zombies in twd: they can't run and they can't climb. so, unless you're surprisingly attacked by them or too many happen to surround you, you actually have a chance to get away alive.

This comment is presented by you from someone who almost had Deek gotten eaten alive by a horde of freakers xD

[running-in-the-dark]

a super fun thing that my brain is really good at is hearing a random fact and remembering it forever. but only if it's bad :)

[buildarocketboys]

:// feeling down and bad about myself for no reason, send nice messages if u want?

[bixiaoshi]

my mom trying to get me to say that i am smart is so funny to me

[merkerlerspeaks]

Zodi/Celeste/Raine is somehow both my baby and also the girl my inner little weird girl looks up to so much she adopts parts of her as her personality

[amenti-aardwolf]

I'm so happy you caught so many things in that, haha

Glad you're enjoying it so far, bless

It's so fun to read! I'm hoping it turns out okay for them. Love your version of the boys so much. 💖💖💖