#but people say his route is cute so! we'll see!

[frankensteined]

folks who stuck with ryuki during their first playthroughs are god's strongest soldiers

i'm about to punt this kid

[vidavalor]

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does it mean to dance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Within that word, though? Is the word prop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is healthy as all fuck:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I really don't think he did...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is to dance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How did they get into the answering machine?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Omens is completely sending up this mindset.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the standpoint of this story?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*tilts head* hiiiii Crowley...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crowley, on the other hand?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, why did he?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you remember how Aziraphale phrased the idea to Crowley?

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's so damn cute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's what the dancing is all about.

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

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

[m-jelly]

Hello, Jelly! Can I please request a Canon Levi x Wife Reader who is actually a sly cunning, smart intelligent noble woman with a kind, heart of gold? You can do what you want with the plot. Thank you

@kenkopanda-art <3

Cute brain

Levi x fem!Reader

Canon, wife and husband, romance, love, married, sweet moment, fluff.

Levi spends a day off with you and gets to see how you work.

Big thank you to @ladycheesington for helping me come up with a plot.

@ladycheesington @levisbrat25 @nyxiieluna @li-anne @galactict3a @youre-ackermine @thebobaprincess @2moth-anon2 @cypidity @notgoodforlife @demonsimp6 @nbinairyn

Levi leaned against the frame of the window as a man dropped to his knees before you. He tried not to laugh when the man started begging you to help him. The man was pleading for you to give him back everything, but you sat behind your desk drinking your tea.

He shuffled closer. "I need those trading deals. Give them back."

You hummed. "I paid for the fair and square. You lost, accept it."

He grabbed the edge of the desk. "I need them!"

"I don't think you do. You have so much money that you don't know what to do with it. It is just you and you pay your workers poorly." You sighed. "About them. I have paid them off and they are now working for me."

"You sly bitch!"

Levi snarled. "Tch, watch your fucking mouth. That's my wife you're talking about."

The man shook in fear. "I didn't know...you...uh..."

You smiled at him. "So, I have the trading routes, I have your workers and you kind of owe me money because you took some loans."

He started to get nervous. "I uh..." He laughed nervously. "I don't have it yet."

You tilted your head. "Hmm...Levi? As a man from the underground city, you know very well what things can bring in money, right?"

Levi walked closer. "I do."

"Anything on him that could sell well for his debt?"

Levi cracked his knuckles. "Yes."

You got up and packed a few things as Levi got what you needed. You waited for the man to scamper out sobbing before you held your husband's hand. "You ready?"

Levi squeezed your hand tightly. "Yes."

You kissed the back of his hand and walked with him through the town until you reached a large building. You slipped inside and grinned when kids started screaming and shouting for you and Levi. You kissed Levi's cheek and left him to the children you'd both saved from the underground. You moved to the person in charge and handed them money.

The teacher welled up. "Thank you so much! Oh, Mrs Ackerman, you have been wonderful. You and your husband have rescued so many children and women from the underground."

You smiled softly. "Levi came from that life and he lost his mother to the city. We want to prevent more death and suffering."

"You're both a blessing." She placed the money in her safe. "How is your husband?"

You giggled. "Likely playing with the kids." You walked with her back to Levi running around with the children. "There he is." You smiled as the rescued women were giggling and saying nice things about Levi. "It makes me happy to see these women and children doing well. Do we have enough for therapy?"

The teacher nodded. "We do. I'll action it. These ladies and children have seen and done things...we'll get them the support."

Levi jogged over to you and panted. "I have fought titans, people, trained for days and even camped out beyond the walls for days. None of that compares to running around with little kids for a while." He ruffled his hair and sighed. "I'm exhausted, but it's fun."

You giggled. "You are doing wonderful with them."

"Thank you." He hummed a bit. "Kids..."

You kissed his cheek. "A lovely thought."

He nodded. "Yeah, yeah it is."

You hugged Levi's arm. "Shall we buy the kids some sweets?"

"Sounds good and then a date after?"

You kissed Levi's cheek. "Perfect."

[nomoreusername]

Bless You

Pairing:Newt x female reader

Summary:After crawling through the vents you end up meeting a cute British boy.

Aris and I are the only ones left from our Maze. We've been told all of our friends are safe and happy. We'd believe it if we were complete idiots.

Now we spend our nights on look-out for any clues we can find. Any possible escape routes, our friends, or ideas of where the bodies go is quickly noted.

"I swear we're just going to fall through these things one day,"I mumbled, crawling next to my friend.

"That isn't even funny."

"It wasn't supposed to be. I'm just adding more terror to this already horrifying place. Maybe you can put it in your list of fears."

"We have enough of those,"He pointed out.

"Yeah, but I'm just saying-"

"Stop,"He hushed, putting his hand out. I gave him a questioning look, but he only shook his head.

"Go back,"He mouthed, pointing behind us. This was understandably confusing and irritating, but I didn't ask him about it. I'm sure I'd get an explanation later.

Apparently, that came sooner than I would have hoped. Someone sneezed, and I did probably the most idiotic thing in my life.

"Bless you,"I said, absentmindedly. Aris looked at me in disbelief. It was then that it clicked in my mind how much I just messed up.

"What? Who's there?"Someone asked.

"Let's go,"He mouthed again.

"What if we just see who they are?"I suggested.

"No. Go back now."

There was the rustling of bedsheets. Aris was silently begging me to leave. I know I probably should, but maybe we could trust this stranger.

Actually, now that I'm thinking it through that's a bad idea. Quickly but quietly we got ready to leave.

Everything next happened in a flash. The vent cover was off, and some strange boy climbed from his bunk into the ceiling. We all sat there staring at each other. He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion while I just was frozen with wide eyes.

"Who are you two?"He asked after a minute of dead silence. While there are a thousand other questions probably running through his head that's probably the most obvious one.

"You're dreaming,"I blurted out. Aris gave an exasperated sigh from next to me.

"No. I've definitely seen you before, and I doubt I'd dream of strangers."

"I'm just the girl of your dreams,"I shrugged.

"Y/N, you are terrible at excuses. Listen, I'm Aris, that's Y/N, and we're just trying to figure some things out."

"Are you taking a bloody midnight stroll through the vents?"The boy asked. It was clear now that he had an accent. It was strangely nice to listen to. That's probably not something most people would think about when a stranger is sitting across from them in a vent, but nothing about this situation is normal. There's no way any thought could make this weirder than it is.

"We're doing some things. Before I explain why we're in a death trap do you want to tell us your name?"I asked, tired of referring to him as stranger in my mind.

"What?"He asked quickly.

"Y/N, that's a terrible thing to say,"Aris scolded.

"It's the truth. Now tell us your name stranger,"I repeated.

"I'm Newt. Now what are you talking about?"

"I like your name. Well, since you've disturbed our mission we'll explain tomorrow. Meet us at our table. You'll find it in no time."

"But-"

"So long Newt. Have a great sleep,"I said before he could get another word out. Judging by the paranoid expression on his face I don't think that's happening, but we pretended not to see as we made our way back to our rooms.

"Seriously Y/N? That's the way we get caught? Because you said bless you?"Aris whispered.

"It's a reflex. It's not my fault I have manners,"I defended.

"We know nothing about him. He could think we're insane."

"We know his name is Newt,"I reminded him.

"That's not what I meant. Tonight think of how we explain this to him. I'll do the same. I'll see you tomorrow Y/N."

"Will do. Goodnight Aris,"I responded, before making my final stop of the night.

Carefully dropping into my top bunk I laid down and stared at the ceiling. All the while I thought more about the random boy I had just met. Something tells me the mysterious blonde with a cute accent will believe us just fine.

[katakosmos]

i’m begging you to make a post with all the bartydora thoughts in one place PLEASE. I NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING.

so, i see them in a very specific context, where evan, pandora and regulus are a really close friendgroup, and barty is the last to arrive. this works in my fic (cause, yk, it's the whole plot), but it could also work at hogwarts: evan and pandora are sorted in two different houses and, since they're inseparable and even a little arrogant, they don't have any friends except regulus, and they have known him since childhood.

barty, on the other hand, is a popular guy. even if he's a ravenclaw like pandora, they spoke to each other probably three times in four years. he also, like the twins, has no friends: he just knows people. and many.

he has never been interested in regulus, evan and pandora, but when the first rumors start to spread at hogwarts ("that rosier almost killed a kid!", "look! he came back without an eye!"), he finds himself completely fascinated by them.

somehow, he makes his way within the group. he's different from all of them: he's smart, but he doesn't care about having good grades if he has to work hard to get them; he goes to parties; he has an horrible family too, but he never seems to think about his parents, he doesn't even miss them. he says he doesn't have a family, that he's alone but happy.

so pandora sees barty, and she realizes that her life can be different. that she can be free from the obsessive control evan has over her (cause yk how my evan is: violent, control freak, obsessed with pandora in an unhealthy way; he can't stay away from her even for a second, they sleep in the same bed, he believes that every boy who talks to pandora wants to take her away from him).

and so she thinks barty is a sign, and that he came to save her. she could absolutely get rid of evan on her own (and in fact she will, much later), but after years of control, during which evan organized everything in her life, she doesn't even know what it means to be free to choose and decide. so she needs barty. he's the key.

she thinks "if i make him fall in love with me, we'll marry and i'll be free".

the first time pandora shows who she really is to someone, that someone is barty. and he doesn't get it. doesn't get her. because barty is sure he already knows the real pandora, but he doesn't really see beyond what pandora wants people to see: a beautiful girl who always smiles, a doll, kind and gentle.

and also, we could say he doesn't really care. he just finds it reassuring to have a source of positivity at his side, and he's not interested in understanding who pandora really is. so while she desperately tries to be saved (do you see how absurd this is?), barty is completely obsessed with evan, he has fallen right into his trap. because evan isn't stupid, he understood very well what pandora was doing, and he took away her last escape route too.

(and evan then – poor boy, he didn't expect it – falls into his own trap, because he discovers he can't resist barty, and that wasn't his plan).

and barty turns out to be just another version of evan, so imagine pandora's disappointment.

this is what happens "behind the scenes" i would say, but in reality barty and pandora adore each other. he is completely devoted to the twins, and he treats pandora like a goddess. he loves her and he tries in every way to make her happy. pandora finds him very cute and funny; barty introduces her to parties (and also to xenophilius), and barty is actually one of the first people to treat pandora for who she is: a completely separate individual from evan, a girl with a different personality and different interests.

their relationship is not sexual. they kissed a couple of times, but laughing and joking, so they both knew it was not serious. is it just a friendship then? no, because they feel some sort of desire towards each other. barty would have sex with her, sometimes he dreams of it, but only because he knows it can never happen.

pandora is unattainable and this excites him.

(adding a pinterest board)

[amoransia]

Really late, but here's my ekuoto chapter 70 commentary. Nothing special, just me freaking out. You know. The usual.

Watch out for spoilers!

Dante got a very special dialogue balloon with "..." in it. Which is curious to me. I'm sure it means some sort of reflection or surprise happening within him; I really want to what he's thinking. How do you feel? Knowing that the that child you were entrusted can't even bear to be awake anymore? That he runs to escapism? Must suck. Anyway.

On the other hand, dearest Daniel is real composed. Good job on getting info out of Belphegor. That's not really a high bar, though lmao... I mean, how are you a demon and can't LIE? Embarrassing... Go back to demon high school or something. Fall from grace again! The whole premise of your existence is being a lying thing that leads people to sin, and you're here having communication issues??? Dude. That's so moe.

Everyone thinking Belph's got something up his sleeve is fucking hilarious. No. Sorry. He's not Kira or anything like that. It's not all according to his "keikaku". He's just kinda dumb and suffers from Villain Monologue Syndrome...

Him saying "my witch", though... ough! (takes critical hit)

Really funny how he showed him off sleeping and everything. Why are you bragging? Is this something to show off? I guess it is for you... I'd be embarrassed if all my coworkers suddenly saw me sleeping on a plasma 100" inch TV, though. Maybe have a little consideration! Also, I don't think anyone's mentioned this before, but I think it's a cool detail that Priest's in a fetal position. Not only does this position bring one comfort, but it can also represent how he's about to be "reborn" as a witch of Sloth. The sphere he's sleeping in can kinda be a uterus, right?

Belphegor and Mikhail replying to each other while Leah was suffering out of confusion was funny. She got the straight man role forced onto her. Miha's "I see!" was cute. Very casual, as if he wasn't talking to a Demon Lord lol. To be fair, Bel is not really intimidating.

Meanwhile, Vir is busy trying to lead his shounen manga team to victory... (or not really.) They'll definitely get some piece of Belphegor though. I wonder what it'll be... he doesn't have anything like Asmodeus' eyes sticking out, so this is a mystery to me.

Me when I get excited about an interest of mine and end up yapping too much

Dante and Vergilius are heading to the same place, so they'll meet up again... I'm looking forward to the mess that comes out of that 👀.

Imuri needs to step up her game, or I'll be taking matters into my own hands because this is ridiculous. Femme Fatale? Wtf are you talking about. Fraudmuri. The Demon Lord of Fraud. Her true title.

Her biggest crime so far is being more in love with the idea of being in love with Priest than actually caring for him. Does that make sense? So far, she hasn't done any effort in actually coming to know him. She needs to KNOW!!!! At least I can respect that she also takes male rivals seriously... and her aggressiveness towards them. Lole.

She doesn't call Priest "sleepyhead" in the JP raws. I don't really mind the addition, but I thought it was worth noting here anyway. Makes it cute.

"It'll be over soon" Naw bro Imuri is coming at you with a fucking sledgehammer. Watch out.

Tiny Imuri is so fawking cute. I've been craving these Imuri flashbacks for forever because we know virtually nothing about her. What moves her. Why does she long to love!! We'll know in due time, I guess. But please show me a bit of it, Aruma-sensei...

Asmodeus being considerate enough to make sexual things vague to Imuri is nice, but it confuses me a bit. Well. I shan't dwell on it, lest my head blows up.

Imuri seems to have some complex about being a demon with no demon power, because she keeps asserting that she is a demon? Am I explaining this properly? Like in this chapter (ch.70) and chapter 3.

Anywho.

Imuri imagining the BL route... save me... my fucking sides... I burst out laughing the first time my eyes laid on that panel. True to her succubus nature, she didn't even consider the possibility of them using blood or whatever else instead of straight-up KISSING. Those are still bodily fluids, right?? Calm down, girl! Stay put!!!

"I'm not letting his first kiss go to some guy that just appeared!!" HE'S BEEN THERE FOR A DECADE! YOU ARE THE NEWCOMER!!! IMURI, GIRL!! You absolute buffoon! Clown, even!

Whew. Lmao.

This arc also feels like a callback to that one "sleeping beauty" comment from chapter 3.

...except their roles have switched.

This time, Imuri will be the one kissing Father on the cheek to wake him up, and it'll be so, so cute. Trust. Trust me. This will happen. (Going insane).

Go and make him your witch, Imuri... Dew it... Make a move... (screaming and crying)

[kissmetwicekissmedeadly]

Partners on the Prowl event highlights!! (Napoleon's route)

(im so late to this but I know I had thoughts about it so im going to go through my screenshots and ramble)

I was excited for this event! When it first came out in JP I focused so hard on how good he looks in an uniform that I wrote a whole fic about it, oops. Not that it had anything to do with the event itself, i dont think i even translated the synopsis or anything....I imagined the MC would be a normal citizen in this AU, so it was such a surprise seeing that they're actually partners! Good partners at that. It's made sure that we see how well they work in a team, even the town people can see it.

(spoilers to Napoleon's main route in the paragraph ahead)

I really like having the chance to see him in this light. In Napoleon's route (especially early on) we do feel him as equal to us, like a friend (contrasted to, say, Mozart, or any of the "great men" of the mansion), mostly due to him being a fellow human, and well, because that's how he wants to be seen. It's something similar here with them sharing a job position, being a team. It felt nostalgic!! MC's secret feelings for him are a bit more extreme though, it hurts to see her like that. With Napoleon being super friendly and casual around her, it would be really really heartbreaking if he truly felt nothing back 💔

Also, Napoleon drinking wine 😳 we do have a few instances of him drinking wine before, and even if it doesn't necessarily show his preference and is just a go-to alcoholic drink for the writers to slip into the stories, i must say that i like it! It stays true to the real Napoleon's preferences, as he liked (red) wine. I'd like to think that it's not a coincidence!

Their banter. I'm so so so glad we get to see this HAHA Napoleon is usually a bit teasing but here they can go all the way since it's "friendly" banter lol he's not busy saying how cute she is so instead he just laughs his ass off. I like the emphasis on his typically strong laugher, with even his shoulders shaking! That's monsieur de wahaha right there!

HE ACTUALLY STARTED TALKING ABOUT THE CREPES LIKE THE CREPE ENTHUSIAST HE IS???? "They put cheese in the batter to make it creamier" STFU WHY ARE YOU A CREPE NERD!!! This too:

he also makes them so naturally he pays attention to how they're made. That's the closest we'll get to see him being a nerd about something, and I appreciate it a lot. Also I really felt MC, starting to like something because of him.....oh girl

I did see it coming, MC getting in danger like that, but it still got dramatic so fast!! A little over the top maybe but do you think I'm going to complain jtskkg he was cool, okay! We're in a James Bond movie now.

It made me wheeze how "oh and by the way" he slipped this detail in, and again, I don't mind it. I prefer a dynamic event story like that! We got to see many sides of him through new eyes, but he was still pretty much himself. Laughing a lot, teasing, catching people's eye, friendly, crepe-loving... This had all the elements for a Napo lover to enjoy! 😋

Also, the epilogue was hot...

If you read this far, thank you for your attention! 🫡🫶

[butterflydm]

ever onward in our DAV adventure...

I'm on such a high with this game right now.

The romantic scenes I've gotten to do with Lucanis so far have made me very giggly and happy while I was playing through them. And Neve approves of our romance. <3

My next big main quest made me SO happy! Delightful, delightful! I really do love the quest & flow design of DAV and, even though I have to admit to some protectiveness/defensiveness over DAI (it was my first Dragon Age game), I think that DAV improved on it in several ways. I feel like the tension of the main storyline is a lot stronger here than it was in DAI post-Skyhold. The open world was just... too open in DAI, imo. Pulling back and making it more controlled in DAV (plus eliminating collection quests entirely except for the one) was a good game design decision.

When we got stuck in Elgar'nan's trap and then Rook heard SOLAS reaching out through the thinned Veil to help us through! I was just eating up the conversation between Elgar'nan and Solas as we fought our way through to save the Dalish. This game has been giving me so much great lore and I am loving it to pieces. Sneaking through the Venatori camp was... definitely illuminating on their mindset. They want old Tevinter back again, and the since the old Tevinter gods were actually the servants of the old elven gods...

Also... we're gonna have to kill that big-ass dragon that Elgar'nan just summoned (and then fed the Venatori to after we freed the elves) so... you know. That's coming.

Had a great conversation with Solas afterwards (Rook has officially earned his respect) and we got a bit of him talking with some regretful longing about the Inquisitor after we got a bit of her doing the same in our earlier meeting, so that was sweet (I set them up as having romanced in DAI so I could get any potential extra dialogue). Rook called Solas out on his pride, and we really did get to see a big difference between Solas and Elgar'nan -- Solas knows how to apologize and realizes it when he screws up. Which was true in DAI as well -- if you took the high approval route with him, he's way more conflicted about his ending choices, because he realizes that his initial assumptions about people post-Veil were incorrect. If you prove him wrong, he admits to being wrong.

Solas also gave a pretty clear 'endgame approaching' warning in the game, in the sense of saying that our next encounter with the gods is likely to be our last chance, so my next priority is to finish up any character or region quests, to get everyone as prepped as possible for the next big fight. Companions were my first priority, to try to get them all up to Hero of the Veilguard status alongside Harding.

So, companion updates:

Harding - already a Hero of the Veilguard, but I had a really good conversation with her after the Solas convo, where she expressed how glad she was that she had friends to help her past feeling the weight of the Titans' pain on her shoulders and how she believes that Solas can be saved too. Okay, I definitely need to go with an Inky who doesn't believe that Solas can be saved in my next run, because I'm very curious how her opinion might change if Inky thinks Solas needs to be stopped as opposed to saved! (I'm wondering if it's like how Varric's approval during Mages/Templars choice in DAI depends on what Hawke chose in DA2). Harding firmly believes that Lavellen could save Solas from trapping himself in his regrets and bad choices if given the chance. So it's possible we might have a Solas/Inky happy ending waiting at the end of the game if we play our cards right. Maybe. We'll see! Depends on Solas and his stubbornness, really.

Taash - I wanted to finish up them next, to see if that moved the Taash/Harding romance forward. We've gotten some hints and flirting here and there and it's been very cute. During the quest to take care of the Stormrider dragon, Taash asked Harding about her mom, and they had some good mom-related conversations.

Taash's personal quest really tugged at the heartstrings (I shed a few tears, for sure). I had Taash leaning towards being more Rivani and their mom wasn't a big fan of that. And was confused about Taash being non-binary. And now Taash has to struggle with the pain of never getting to have that big conversation where the two of them work it out. And that's hard but also... really true to life at times. It felt very honest.

Taash's personal quest also crystallized something I was trying to say before about the themes of the game -- for some of the characters, it's not sins of the past so much as the struggle with the weight of your culture and the baggage that it brings. That's become more clear as we've gone through each quest. Because that was definitely Taash, who is torn between two cultures, Rivani or Qunari -- one culture that stresses personal freedoms and is chill about magic and spirits, and the other one which stresses authoritarianism and control and is definitely not chill about magic or spirits. And you can certainly take from both in some ways but there are other ways that the two cultures contrast so strongly that you have to pick one.

But we've had other characters struggling with issues brought about because of their cultural background -- like Bellara, who is dealing with ancient elven history in the form of her brother accepting an offer to serve one of the Forgotten Ones of elven lore; or Harding dealing with the cultural weight of all of the grief and anger of the murdered Titans, and Davrin needing to deal with the 'whatever it takes to win' cultural background of the Wardens coming back around again in the form of the Gloom Howler. The regrets of the past. So... similar to what I was saying before, but slightly modified.

In lighter news: matchmaking successful!

Emmrich - We killed Johanna and destroyed the lantern, but this was a really tough quest on an emotional level. We just lost Taash's mom in the previous quest and then I had to make the call to save Manfred or encourage Emmrich to let him go and move forward into lichdom. And it was a really difficult choice! For this specific Rook, I encouraged him to become a lich but, wow, I was torn. But it is Emmrich's dream, and when we spoke about it... it's clear that it's what he wants. And Manfred isn't any more dead than he was before, since he was always a wisp inhabiting a body. He just won't be... inhabiting anymore. But, yeah. A tough one. Taash got Hero of the Veilguard status at the end of their quest, but Emmrich didn't get it here. Either he'll get it when he becomes a lich, or picking lichdom means that he doesn't get it. I guess I'll find out.

All throughout this, I would go back to the Lighthouse between each mission and run into delightful conversations between my companions. I really love how lively and dynamic it feels like the Lighthouse is. People are always moving around and talking to each other. <3

I moved some other companion missions forward but haven't completed them yet -- I need to do the next story mission in Treviso to complete Lucanis's personal mission, and Neve's mission next goes to the Cobbled Swan, where the Inquisitor awaits for a second check-in (excited to see her again! She's not ~exactly~ my Inky, of course, but you can't distill dozens of hours of characterization into a dozen lines, so I wasn't expecting that). I have some final tie-ups for Taash and Harding, plus the Lichdom ceremony for Emmrich, and I've moved forward to the next steps on Davrin and Bellara's quests.

Speaking of Bellara's questline, this hit me HARD after my recent decision to go no-contact with my brother:

Yeah, that's gonna be a rough one, especially if we have to kill her brother.

My next quest is going to be helping put to rest the souls of the Rivani mages murdered by Templars during DAI (we found a heartbreaking codex entry about this at the time).

[otomefiend]

Victor & William Rex

Story Event: Villains want to bother little 'Robin'

Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Okay, those loaded comments are so sus Victor. Tell us the truth. I'll be watching you even more intently now 👀

This is such a cosy sammich. ✨️

~~Part 1~~

I stepped outside, sandwiched between two men, to find a breathtaking view of the palace garden.

The infantry and cavalry lined up in regular formation like pieces on a chessboard, watching over the path Her Majesty was taking.

Victor: "Your Majesty. Today we are to ride this carriage around the city."

(Umm... I don't have to answer that, right?)

When I nodded, Victor smiled gently.

Victor: "I'm off to finalize the route we'll be taking during the parade. William, please escort Her Majesty."

William: "Yes... Your Majesty, may I have your hand?"

As I took William's hand and walked down the path to the carriage, everyone around me bowed their heads.

(...what a sight! I'm sorry but I'm so happy that I can't calm down...)

William, who was walking next to me, whispered in a voice undetectable to those around us.

William: "What's the matter, Your Majesty? You seem a little more tense than 'usual'."

Kate: ".... you definitely can't see me through the veil, can you?"

William: "Heh, my apologies."

Despite the circumstances, he had the usual smile on his lips.

(Hmm, as expected from the Crown's no.1 most memorable member)

William: "Before Your Majesty gets all jittery, let's think about easing that tension."

William: "Is there anything you'd like me to talk about?"

~~Part 2~~

(What would I like to hear? Well...)

Kate: "You and Victor have been together since the founding of the Crown, haven't you?"

William: "That's right. We've been friends for more than 10 years now?"

Kate: "I'd like to hear about the first time you've met."

William: "...Was it around the time I was arranging the funeral of my father I condemned with my own hands?"

William: "I was unexpectedly invited to the palace by Her Majesty, and there I had a chance encounter with Victor in the audience room."

William: "Neither I nor Victor said much."

William: "But we could immediately see we had something in common."

Kate: "And that something being...?"

William's long eyelashes fluttered like butterfly wings.

William: "The desire for freedom."

Kate: "........."

William: "So we joined our forces and became accomplices."

William: "-- this is how we came together."

Victor: "Oh! What in the name of evil are you chatting about?"

William: "Her Majesty wanted to hear something embarrassing about you."

Victor: "Gosh-darn. What secrets did you share? Is it about me hitting my little pinky the other day? Or..."

William: "Haha, are you curious? You'll have to ask Her Majesty for details."

Kate: "Where are you off to?"

He smiled and whispered in my ear.

William: "......Most people don't know how close I am to Her Majesty."

William: "To avoid strange misunderstandings, I will watch over you from a distance."

~~Part 3~~

The carriage with Victor and me on board set off towards the city.

Kate: "I overheard the guards say that it's unusual for you to accompany Her Majesty at times like these."

Victor: "Indeed, more often than not, I'm in charge of the whole thing. Today's special."

Victor: "I can't leave your cute and adorable self.

Kate: "Hehe, thank you, Victor."

Victor: "Oh, you should be able to see people soon. Shall we open the curtains?"

When Victor removed the curtains, outside the window --

Young man with black hair: "Hey, I see Her Majesty."

Freckled woman: "Congratulations to Her Majesty Queen Victoria!"

The townspeople standing in the streets were smiling and waving at us.

Something indescribably hot welled up in my heart at the sight of it.

(Oh, I see)

Kate: "... so this is what Her Majesty wants to protect?"

She reigned at the top of this prosperous country and thus continued to be loved by the people.

All the while, she led the Crown behind the scenes to conquer evil with evil.

No matter where you looked in the world,

you would never find a person who lived surrounded by light and shadow to such an extent.

Kate: "... It'd be impossible to rule this place without extraordinary resolve."

Victor: "Yes, it's very difficult to fulfil such a duty with the sensibility of an ordinary person. I've thought about it many times myself."

Victor: "......I have heard these words from people around me."

~~Part 4~~

Kate: "... It'd be impossible to rule this place without extraordinary resolve."

Victor: "Yes, it's very difficult to fulfil such a duty with the sensibility of an ordinary person. I've thought about it many times myself."

Victor: "......I have heard these words from people around me."

Victor: "`Her Majesty is not a human`."

Kate: "... not a human?"

Victor: "A pretty selfish thing to say, don't you agree? Kate, are you afraid of Her Majesty?"

I certainly felt something akin to awe.

-- though it seemed different to mere fear.

Kate: "No, quite the opposite."

Victor: "... the opposite?"

Kate: "There's not much I can do otherwise, but I want to support Her Majesty as a fellow woman myself."

Victor: "........."

Victor: "Thank you, Kate. I'm sure the Queen would be pleased to hear what you've just said."

Guard: "Your Majesty, Lord Victor. We managed to ensure the safety of the area, so feel free to go outside."

(Ah… if I remember correctly, I'm supposed to step out and wave to the citizens, right?)

Victor: "Take my hand. Shall we go, Your Majesty?"

~~~

Brown-haired worker: "The Queen is here! Congratulations, Your Majesty!"

As I got out of the carriage, the enthusiasm and cheers of the townspeople became even more intense.

(... this is amazing. I wish Her Majesty could hear this as well)

With that in mind, I frantically waved my hand, trying my best to fulfil my role --

Young man with black hair: "Hey... What's with the... carriage?"

Man in a top hat: "That horse is running out of control... Hey, isn't it dangerous!? It's coming this way...!"

Soldier #1: "Stop the carriage! Protect Her Majesty...!"

Soldier #2: "No, we'll never make it in time...!"

(......ahh)

Victor: "...Kate, come here."

As he pulled me towards him,

the horse ran out from among the cavalry.

(... William?)

Just as it was about to crash into us, William jumped in front of the carriage.

William: "...`Stop`."

~~Part 5~~

The runaway horse came to a halt at William's command.

It was as if the creature had forgotten its ego and was manipulated by someone else.

William: "Are you safe, Your Majesty?"

He smiled when I nodded.

(No one was hurt, right...?)

(...phew, what a relief)

Guard: "Arrest the carriage driver immediately! I will kill you for your impunity!"

(Oh no!)

Kate: "Please wait."

Guard: "... Your Majesty?"

(Ah! I shouldn't. My voice...!)

Victor: "... Kate, it's okay. Leave it to me."

Victor: "This situation was an accident, not a set-up. Her Majesty says to forgive this blunder."

Victor: "Is that so, Your Majesty?"

I gave a hasty nod and received the biggest cheer of the day from those around me.

Victor • William: "........."

The parade then continued and I returned to court where I finally took off Her Majesty's ceremonial dress.

~~~

Kate: "I'm sorry for being selfish."

Victor: "Why should you apologise? I think even Her Majesty would have made that decision."

William: "Indeed. You were just fulfilling the role you've been entrusted with."

William: "As it happens... we're proud of you for doing that."

Kate: "... Victor, William."

(If it wasn't for the two of you, this could have ended up in something serious)

Kate: "Thank you for protecting me."

Victor: "Still, it was great to see William gallantly step in."

Kate: "Very much so. Though I was surprised by your reflexes as well!"

Victor: "Oh? You excel at flattery."

While I was happily chatting with Victor I heard William's soft voice.

William: "...so, Kate."

William: "You look like you want to ask us something, am I right?"

(Ah......)

Victor: "Miss Kate."

Victor: "If that's what you want, we will answer in good faith. Don't hold back."

Blood-colored eyes and jewel-like eyes seemed to see right through me.

(In that case)

Kate: "There's something both of you are not telling me, is there?"

Chapter 3 Premium

[toomuchracket]

got drunk on red wine at a work dinner and all I can think about is d word girly getting drunk and matty is a long distance phone (FaceTime) call away and she calls him and wakes him up but he is so in love with her he’s excited to see her tipsy and happy and chatty on the other line.

you've been out for day drinks with some of your friends, and it was meant to be a quick little afternoon meetup but things got a little bit out of hand - it's only 8pm, and you've all ended up at one of your girls's houses and you are all speeding en route to being pretty bloody drunk lmao. matty's in tokyo, and you really fucking miss him right now, because you know if he was here you'd be snuggled onto his lap passing a bottle of wine between you and smooching, and you haven't kissed him in WEEKS. you take a bottle of red and your cigs out into the garden, sit on the decking under the setting sun, and decide to facetime him because you just really need to see him right now; it's only when he answers all smushed curls and blinking sleep from his eyes with a gravelly "hi baby, you alright?" that you go "oh fuck, i forgot about the time difference, i'm sorry. go back to sleep, darlin', we'll talk later". matty's like "s'fine, babe, i'm up now. don't mind waking up at 4 in the morning if it's your face i'm waking up to", which makes you blush and giggle and matty swoon, and then he's like "how was drinks? you still out?" - when you say yes, he's immediately on alert like "you're outside alone? where is everyone?", and you're like "babe it's ok we're back at afters i'm just in the garden for a cig. look!" and you hold your phone up so he can see into the house. you nearly drop it when you bring it back down like "oh, fuck!", and matty laughs like "you're a bit tipsy, babe. take it it's been a good day then?" - you launch into an excited monologue about where you went for drinks earlier (that you're taking him to when he gets home) and what the new gossip is and what you've been up to while he's been away. your makeup is flaking and you're starting to get sleepy from the wine, but you look so cute that matty can't help himself from staring lovingly at you the whole time, barely registering what you're saying. he giggles when you yawn at the end of your little speech, like "maybe you should get some sleep, sweetheart" and you're like "yeah i'm just booking an uber to go home. some people are staying, but to be honest i can't sleep unless i'm wearing one of your t shirts. i wasn't going to tell you that cos i thought you'd be annoyed at me for stealing them lol. but yeah. miss you a lot" - matty honestly starts tearing up and smiles softly like "not annoyed at you, baby, that's cute. i'm completely yours, you know that, so why wouldn't my wardrobe be as well. and i miss you too, so much. will you facetime me just before you go to sleep? just so i know you're home alright". and you smirk like "you want me to facetime you from our bed while i'm wearing nothing but your clothes? alright, babe, i see where this is going", and matty laughs like "stop it, 4am is too early for me to be horny. just wanna say goodnight to you properly, baby", and you're like "you're very cute and i love you a lot", to which matty's like "i love you more. one more week, sweetheart, then i'm home. can't wait" <3

[misc-obeyme]

So uh... this Princess Rose event, huh??

I don't even know where to start! I wasn't gonna write a post about it 'cause I have too many thoughts, but damn it I couldn't resist so here we are.

SPOILERS & SCREENSHOTS under the cut.

SPOILERS & SCREENSHOTS under the cut.

First of all. I love that Mammon's initial motivation for all of the following shenanigans is "business deals." Like... my man, do you even hear yourself?? And then how his whole pitch is that he's holding up the economy? I wouldn't have accepted that nonsense from anyone else, that's for sure.

And let's be real, Asmo's assertion that his beauty makes other people happy was also something I let slide due to my affection.

What can I say, I love both Mammon and Asmo so very much.

I mean, to be fair, financial security is definitely nice and certainly reduces stress. So he's not wrong.

Oh no! Not a recession! Once again... are you hearing yourself!?!?

I will say that the non key route was once again a complete disappointment. You don't even find out what happens at the end?? It's just them being like, oh yeah? We'll see who wins! And then it ends. So you don't actually see who wins at all unless you play the keyed route. Sometimes the non key route is okay, but for other events it's pretty pointless. This was one of those.

Aside from that, though, I quite enjoyed this event. It was sufficiently hilarious, courtesy of the other brothers being their usual selves.

MAMMON IN THIS EVENT THOUGH.

We already knew that when Mammon wants something, he will work hard for it. This is further evidence of that because he chooses Lucifer to teach him ON PURPOSE knowing full well that Lucifer will not go easy on him. And then he steps up to the challenge!

However, I quite liked how Asmo wasn't a slacker, either. He wasn't like oh I'm pretty so I've got this in the bag. No, he chooses Barbatos and also works hard to get himself ready.

And like despite EVERYBODY expressing how they don't think these guys are gonna get anywhere, they both bust their asses anyway.

Asmo is not having it, guys.

Have some faith, Lucifer.

I'm pretty sure this was the only thing Luke said in this event, but he didn't hold back, huh?

BUT THEN.

That ending.

Sir. I'm going to need you to stop being so cute. My life depends upon it.

I think you could say that while they ended up being twin princesses, neither one of them would have won without the other. I think it was the fact that both of them sacrificed their own chances in order to help the other that caused them to win. Because doing something like that really demonstrated the nobility that they were looking for in the first round.

It's just more proof of how the brothers truly care about each other. Even if they argue all the time, when things get serious they can count on each other.

Can I tell you how excited I was when Asmo was ready to go run down that demon with MC? I liked that he was so badass about it and just kind of kept brushing off MC when they were like aren't you late for the show?! Can't you let me handle this?! And he was just like nope, I won't stand for any demon smearing my brother's reputation like that.

I really think they need to let Asmo be a little more evil. Like yes, he's beautiful and he has perfect skin, but he will absolutely kick your ass and he won't even break a nail doing it.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this event. I really need to go back and play the other Dame event on Lonely Devil I just haven't gotten to it yet.

Now for some random screenshots that made me lol.

Yes, okay, please go ahead.

I loved that Lucifer said this to MC. He's so done with everything, he's just like please stop trying to make jokes.

At least he's honest.

Beel demonstrating his unusual type of synesthesia - the ability to taste numbers.

New tongue twister just dropped!

Okay and Levi in this event had so many excellent one liners, he gets his own section. I can't deny that I'm on a bit of a Levi-loving kick lately, so maybe that's why, but I just thought he was so funny.

He's so precious.

Okay, I'm done. I always take too many screenshots and then I want to post them all. Because I just think all these guys are so funny. I can't help it.

I realize that I didn't mention anything about the gender aspects of this event, what with the whole Dame situation, but do I really need to? I've seen some excellent posts about that already. And honestly, anyone who thinks that the Devildom doesn't already have completely different ideas on gender hasn't been paying attention.

And also I don't have time to write anymore, this post is already too long. I apologize for the length lol. But thank you for reading!

--

[yukidragon]

The pregnancy AU is so dark but good. Realistic.

CW discussion of abuse and suicide mention

What Ian is doing to Alice in this AU is called post-separation abuse (and arguably stalking). Using child support money and visitation to keep his hooks in her are particularly dirty tactics, as is trespassing in to the hospital to hound her while she’s vulnerable after the birth, and the fact that his suicide attempt injuries are creating guilt in her.

He’s taking advantage of her inability to set boundaries and completely ignoring those of the hospital that are set for patients safety and wellbeing.

Ian paying for the flat trying to get Alice to move back in is favour sharking and trying to maintain control over her through financial means.

I do know exactly how dangerous Jack is after what he did to Nick. And that he’s also 100% manipulating MC/Alice, and half considered the theory that he may want to take over MCs body. I don’t think things will end well. But in this particular instance I’m actually more on Jack’s side and despite his ulterior motives think him hitting the call button to help Alice/talking to her about Ian’s manipulation is super reasonable.

Even from source material I genuinely don’t think Jack is the only shady manipulator in the game. Unstable yandere Ian is plausible.

Canonically Ian’s got his own issues resulting from abuse and is pitiful but he’s still got the upper hand financially and whether consciously or not he can be a manipulative softboy. Ian’s crying and incessant calls pressure MC, he talks about their history and grabs for any emotional hold he can get. They can’t afford to cut ties by moving out of the flat he knows the location of and presumably still has keys to, and he doesn’t give MC any choice around him returning to try and get back together. He knows the calls are unwanted as he “didn’t think you’d answer”.

He’s scary persistent. Abandonment issues are making him irrational. This is beginning to border on post separation abuse/stalking.

Plus to me Ian’s ‘intimacy’ while together seemed very one sided, kind of forced or forceful with what he did at the end. You’re welcome to disagree but I found it pretty difficult to listen to that encounter. His wants trumped her comfort level.

It’s ok if anyone likes him as a character, he’s cute, nobody is all bad and it is fictional.

I’m just saying I buy this AU because personally even canon Ian gives me bad vibes.

This is a very thoughtful analysis on the pregnant with Ian's child AU I posted here and here, but also MC's relationship with Ian as a whole. I'm also glad that you enjoyed the AU, even if it's pretty darn dark.

I have actually touched on Ian's personality in several past posts, particularly in this in depth one where I examined why he might have cheated. I do agree that Ian is being manipulative with his phone calls, from the way he words things to how he reminds MC of their past together and how much he loves and needs them. How far he'll go to get them back is something we'll have to wait and see, as the demo only gives us a glimpse into his desperation.

I do agree that Ian's sex scene was a bit rough to get through. You're not alone in thinking that he was being too forceful since he wouldn't let MC stop, pleading with them and even physically taking control away from them. Even MC thinks of it as them being used.

It was like being used. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I didn’t care if he WAS using me.

I won't go as far to say it's dubious consent, but it did feel like MC's ability to say no or stop was denied because Ian was horny and really wanted them to get him off.

Some people like being choked/suffocated during sex, but that's not everyone's fetish, and MC wasn't given a choice in the matter, nearly blacking out from lack of oxygen at the end.

It's possible that this is a similar situation to the sex scene in the "no" route where the writing didn't quite convey the tone intended. I'm willing to accept that may be the case and reserve my judgement for intent with the scene for when the updated demo comes out and reexamines that scene in particular when it comes to MC and the player's ability to make choices.

However, as we've seen in the demo, Ian gets pointers on how to have sex from ecchi/hentai. I don't know about you, but those sex scenes tend to have the penetrating male partner be excessively forceful, with the submissive partner at times protesting or even clearly saying "no," only to have it be framed as them actually being shy and wanting to be dominated so forcefully. It's a "romanticized" view of sex that lacks real communication for the sake of keeping the action going, as it were.

There are plenty of people who learn misinformation from hentai/ecchi/porn/word of mouth, especially if they're inexperienced, as MC and Ian are. Often times these types of porn are meant just to satisfy the straight male audience without considering other genders or orientations. There's plenty of bad lessons about toxic masculinity in these types of fiction and how much focus and glorification there is on the dominant male partner to get off. If the media shows that the other partner is satisfied by these actions that mostly just gratify the dominant male, and Ian is not getting feedback from his partner to tell him what they disliked, he can just happily think nothing is wrong with his technique.

This is especially true when it comes to having a partner who struggles to advocate for their own comfort if it might make the other partner feel bad. This is the narrative I'm exploring with Alice and Ian in Sunshine in Hell, and is part of why their relationship turned toxic. Lack of communication on boundaries, and Ian taking more from Alice than she should have been giving, ultimately led to an unhealthy dynamic between them.

As we've seen in the demo, while MC did take the lead at first during the sex scene, wanting to make Ian feel good, when they tried to pull back, he stopped them, giving them pleading eyes and saying it's the first time they got so far and it feels so good. They love him, so they give in to his needs. They're used to taking care of him and his needs, as we saw a few times earlier in the demo. He's sensitive, cries easily, and is very apologetic. Someone who is empathetic will have a hard time wanting to do anything that might upset him, like, say... telling him that what he's doing is hurting or suffocating them. They might even just skip asking him to return the favor by going down on them next since he's tired.

That's the case with Alice. She consented to sex with Ian, but there was this undercurrent of pressure to it. They're in love, it's what he wants, he says such sweet things, and it's something natural that couples do, right? If they don't have sex, well... isn't that just saying that she isn't attracted to him, like those bullies that mocked his looks? Isn't that comparing him to the people who forced SA on her? Isn't that saying that his sex drive is wrong like his mother always told him? I don't think pressuring her was a conscious choice on Ian's part, but when Alice struggled to deny him what he wanted and was so used to helping and taking care of him since he needed her... there's this undercurrent of obligation that encouraged her to just, well, "lie back and think of England" as the saying goes.

In their relationship, Alice's comfort and needs were sacrificed over and over for Ian's sake, because he needed her. He needed her to be the strong one, to support him. He had a shitty life and was all alone. He couldn't face the world without her. Without her, he had no one who loved and cared for him, no one to find him desirable. He got spoiled by her in ways... so when he no longer had her and he suddenly had to stand on his own... he felt very lonely. And very horny.

So it's really not any wonder that Ian was tempted when other people, besides Alice, started paying attention to him, liking him, and finding him desirable... especially in a place where Alice simply wasn't around to fulfil all his needs.

I think Ian is a really interesting character to explore. I do think his story arc is going to be one of redemption for his mistakes, both with the cheating and with their relationship in general. He's flawed, and I think that's the point. I don't think it's bad to like him or want to give him that second chance. I also don't think it's bad to dislike him and feel uncomfortable by the way he manipulates and pressures MC.

Ian has done damage to MC with his cheating. Whether or not the rest of his relationship with MC was healthy, well, I think that we might have to wait and see and/or do our own headcanons there. I'm sure for plenty of Ian fans, what went on between him and their MC was a lot healthier, just with a few hiccups and one major issue with his cheating.

I do know that Alice and Ian simply weren't a healthy relationship. They won't work together, even if he never cheated. Too much damage has been done and continues to be done. What Ian does with the phone calls is crushing to someone like Alice who only wants him to be happy... even though he broke her heart over and over again... and he continues to do so in a desperate attempt to return things to the way they used to be, when they were happy.

Ian just doesn't understand that there were too many times that his happiness came at the cost of Alice making herself unhappy... while she lied to herself that she was happy just because she made him happy.

To be fair to Ian, he can't exactly understand that he's taking too much when Alice doesn't love herself as much as she loves him.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

[lanshappycorner]

EVERYONE last night I finished Le Salut's Salvation end .... thoughts under the cut (spoilers, of course)

From the very beginning I was wondering how Adolphe and Ankou could be connected and why their routes were together but never in a million years did I think they'd be the same damn person lmaoo😭😭 I mean I kinda figured it out along the way but it wasn't what I was expecting going into it

When it comes to who I wanted to date I know they're like the same person but urm. I actually liked Ankou more than Adolphe😭😭😭 TO BE FAIR I've never had much interest in Adolphe as a love interest like I have never in my life ever been interested in the big brother archetype although I see the appeal

So you can guess that I was probably really disappointed throughout the route and especially at the end😭 like...Ceres kept on getting moments with Adolphe and I was thinking to myself the entire time "We'll get romantic moments with Ankou too right?" WE GOT IT WHEN HE WAS DYING😭😭😭😭😭😭

I reached the ending and he died and then Adolphe and Ceres got together and everyone was happy and I was like "What....? What????" I went back and replayed the ending twice because I was so flabbergasted I was like "where is the part where I get to marry ankou I've been trucking through all these routes just to get to him and you're telling me I don't get to marry ankou???????😭😭😭😭😭"

So that was kind of a disappointment but aside from the romance, AS A ROUTE I liked Le Salut the most (I haven't played any of the other salvation ends yet tho) I felt like it tied everything in and speedran through everyone's issues somehow but I liked the whole group's banter lol

Also Jean and Mathis being kinda like an actual family at the end is crazy like I still can't forgive Jean but also admittedly I do think it's nice that he and Mathis are able to get to know each other for the people that they are😔 it was cute even if I still do have beef with Jean

Also YVES I thought it was so funny how Ankou and Adolphe were all so highkey shipping Yves and Ceres and Yves was just like "You guys are being weird😭😭" free my boy Yves.... but aside from that I really do think it's interesting how Adolphe and Ankou's route are just them basically fighting fate and thematically it does make sense that Yves is Ceres's fate.

Like Ceres and Yves met when they were little when he saved her life and they had a lot of chemistry just in the common route. Yves is the poster boy for this series so all the signs are pointing at him as the Main boy. And tbh it's interesting because Yves is there to help in every route despite whoever Ceres chooses and we never rly know what he's thinking until his own route because it's like. We'll she's "destined" to be with you in all ways but she didn't choose you

It's also why in that small segment in Le Salut's salvation end, I was shocked that there was any mention of Yves's feelings for Ceres and how he felt attracted to her but he would never tell Adolphe like😭😭 Yves rly is her "fate" ..... and in general I guess if I had to pick a ship I would also pick Yves over Adolphe I'm sorry 😭😭 not that I don't like Adolphe I just happen to like Yves (and Ankou...despite the technicalities) more

If I had to rate the romance I still think that Scien is my favorite though solely because I like his dynamic with Ceres. After that would be Yves and then Le Salut (Le Salut would be higher if they LET ME DATE ANKOU but they didn't so .) After that would be Lucas and then Mathis (*I don't dislike any of the routes Mathis just happened to be last...just because)

In terms of plot though Le Salut would be first, followed by Yves and then Scien and everything else is the same. I don't have much else to say regarding that but despite the issues, I did enjoy Le Salut the most

But also omg Dahut that was crazy....I rly liked dahut so I was hoping that he wasn't like the big bad but😭😭😭 you know what they did a good job. I had a feeling dahut was going to be the bad guy and I desperately hoped otherwise but it still happened it really tapped into the despair aspect lol but despite everything I still really liked dahut I think he's written rly well (sometimes when he was talking I had to be like.....well he's making some points but 😭😭....)

I know I said that was the last thing but since we're talking abt Hugo I though he was a rly good character like he's not my favorite. At all. But as a character he's written so well he truly does care for Yves 🥺🥺 he's not "fated" to be with Yves in the sense that he can't be the main character, and be doesn't have the main character's inability to just. Not give a fuck abt anything like he gets scared of Yves's scar and hes not "perfect", it's hard for him to accept certain aspects of Yves but he's aware of them and at the end of the day he still chooses to continue caring for Yves. I truly do think he loves Yves and honestly in every other route besides Yves's route I wish him luck you have this lesbian on your side gayboy go get em👍

Last I would like to talk abt Ceres because that girl is an angel fr like I kinda wished she was meaner because if I was her I'd have snapped ages ago💀 but I get why she is the way she is and because she's so nice everyone likes her😔 she's like...my baby if anyone hurts her I will destroy them like I get why Adolphe is Ceres Defender No 1.

My attachment to Ceres also made me kind of have beef with Hugo for a while because who does this jealous girlfriend bitch think he is but whatever they made up and Ceres stood up for herself so I liked their dynamic in the end (DID NOT like how Hugo keeled over and died like immediately afterwards though :///)

[rosey100]

It had been almost a month since they started "hanging out" after the party and JJ and Varina have gotten closer each passing day, But unotified by both of them (mostly JJ) have been super close where they gave each other pet names while getting to know one another. It wasn't in til they're repeated siblings find out about them it was honestly( Zoe first) Mazzi and Vera who noticed how they act like Varina would be daydreaming out of nowhere with lovey dovey eyes or JJ could be making hearts with his breakfast. JJ was not sure if he could love someone else after the party but he gotten over it slowly and didn't wanna be hasty with anyone else and Varina wasn't sure that JJ would feel the same way about her.Mazzi agreed til she stated the times he was talking to someone on the phone way different when he would be if his friends and how he was going out almost literally of two and a half months without his skateboard or book bag and he would be all smiley when come home (JJ couldn't deny those facts ).For Varina though it was a shocker that her sister Vera figured out of all people who would notice she was the doodles she made and all the time she sneaks out when theirs parents are too busy or when everyone wasn't gonna be home (Varina couldn't try denying it).It took a lot of thinking and a lot of convincing (from mostly Mazzi then friends) for them to finally realize they're true feelings are to

"Just say it already!"

(OK,just a casual night time picnic.. with a girl...just the two of us...alone together far away from your friends and now you're sweating now before you even get the chance to tell your feelings to her-)

*Running to JJ waving*

"JJ! HEY JJ!"

"VARINA! *cough* Varina Hey! I didn't see there."

"Got here sooner then I thought, man you have no idea how hard it was just to make sure my parents- "

Meanwhile JJ's mind

(Wow this is really really happening, she's actually here..with me..and I thought she wasn't gonna be able to come and i ¢an'tevenwa!ttot@llher- hold on J! JUST CLAM DOWN! Just clam down man! You got this J! You got this! )

"Not gonna tell you what took me so long to get here when I got the chance but thankfully I found a quick route here. So we're watching the fireworks form here? "

"Ha? Oh!! Yeah the fireworks! Yeah right here, watching them right here yeah!."

"Ok haha?"

"Hopefully you don't mind, *hovering a bag and shaking it* I thought I could bring some snacks for us tonight."

"Oh that's pretty good, I just got us some drinks too. It RC and lemon lime soda."🤷🏽

*Giggles* " Alright then you lay down the blanket, I'll see if we have enough snacks and we'll get ready. "

In JJ's mind

( WOW! I almost forgot how much smarter she is and she's so cute when she talks like that -)

"Alright you got the blanket?"

"Huh I got a blank chest!?"

*😳

"The Blanket! Did you bring a blanket to watch the fireworks on?!"

"Oh the blanket I think I..I ?!"

"Please... don't tell me, you forgot "

"I mean it's not like I am the one who has it- I did bring the blanket" *pulls out a dark blue plaid blanket out of his backpack*

"You can be sure a darling dork "

*Lays down the blanket on the ground*

**Sits on the blanket**

"Ahh I definitely picked the best place for tonight."

"It sure is, I haven't seen this many stars since I was 7."

"Oh really now?"

"Yay I was a Wild kid then a Wild Kratts kid to be exact."

"Cool, Hey was one too when I was 5, though my mom would be frantic for the stents and crazy things that I and the other get into" 😄

"Seriously I was the definition of a wild child" 😌

"Ya right Goody Two-shoes,even my sister Zoe couldn't lie like that time she was stuck in a cave to get a tarantula when she was 8 even my Uncle Chris almost went to get a jackhammer and she still got out with over six of them."

Six tarantulas at 8 are not even crazy for anyone who would try🫢😆

I'm not joking it happened my dad was the one trying to wake up my mom when she faded.🤣

|*Both laying down laughing and talking for a half hour when waiting for the fireworks to come was getting more different*|

"The sky really pretty at night"

"Yah sure is pretty"

"Varina? I want to come clean."

"Yes J?"

"I didn't tell you to come to just see fireworks."😔

"Huh?!"

"I lured you here to..to -"

"JJ? *nervously*

"I wanted to tell you that I...I "

"You what JJ!!"

I love you

*😧

"You uh Love me*😳

"I..I mean... I love UVD lights"

JJ

"I mean you just a friend for comfort after all, I mean"😅

" I think I should go* stand up walking away angrily*

Huh what!?

*quickly walks to her after realizing*

"You know? It's not every day you could've said it's shright before you got me over here!!"😡

"No! Wait Varina!"

"Leave me out of this JJ!"

"No! Listen I'm sorry I didn't mean it"

"Oh I'm sorry*turns around* , Guess you mean a friend for laughs huh!"

"No Varina it's not like at all"

"Then what do you want for me "

" If you listen to me I'll tell you if you weren't yelling at me and Why you are getting mad for was it because what I said!"

"It's not that "

"Then what did I do "

"You're so serious"🤦‍♀️

*😑🙎🏽

*Whisper to herself * "Cause I love you "

You lor-

"CUZ I LOVE YOU!!!

*🫢

"I..I You love me?!?!"

*😮‍💨 "Cats out the f**king bag "

"Ya but I threw him out first."

"Look I'm sor-

"No Varina listen"

"I know I said that time I was love with her and all that but I was love blind then, I never saw her the way I see her now and tha-

*😤😔

"That's over now, I don't have those feelings her I have for her ever since that party and I never thought it'd would be you"

*🥺

"There not once I haven't stopped thinking of you, I never once thought about anything else it was you, but you were already heartbroken and at first I figured nothing but me feeling sorry for you."

"I didn't think I would feel the way I do or if I ever know how I feel now!?"

"I didn't know if you felt the same way I thought no one would since the night but you were first person to be there for (besides my friends and my little sister who planned to kill her if she knows where she live) me."

"And here I think you're going with me to get a rich kit friend fam."

"Varina, I never thought you felt that way"

"As rich kit"

"As just a friend "

*😔 "Varina"

"You are the best thing that ever happened in my life and you're passionate, you're inventive , you're kindhearted and you're the most beautiful person I've seen inside and out."

"Wow! 🥺 Its just feels so strange yet better to let all that ou-

*Places both hands on her face pulling her to his lips *

*Kiss*

**😳**

*Steps back*

"I..I'm sorry I just got.. ugh I uh." 😨

Jimmy?

Yes

"Have you ever been closer to someone?"

"For a hug?"

A kiss * come close to him hand on his chest*

"Well.. I guess...I don't know...we should you know?"

*🥹

"Just shut up you big dum dumbing head"

*Pulls him by the caller*

Kiss

Varina and Vera Varmitech belongs to @jokerislandgirl32

Zoe, JJ, Mazzi Z belongs to me @rosey100

[dotster001]

Hello!! Congrats on 1k followers! I hope you are doing well

Can i request from your (take my hand) event? If so thanks a lot🙏🏻

1/I’m requesting for ikepri fandom! My first route was licht. I picked him because I was attracted to him the most and after reading his route preview I got interested in his character!

2/Yes he is still my fave! I liked him more after doing his route!

5/I guess you’re asking to tell you things about my personality? So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m more of an introverted and quiet person especially around strangers or people I’m not familiar with. But i can say the opposite when being with close friends/people I’m close with, I act more childish and casual. Sometimes People say i act like a mom even though I look young and is considered short? I have some weird Intuition sometimes that makes me feel if something is going to happen. More things is that i'm an empath so a lot of time i can tell what is someone feeling about something and give them a good advice when they open up.I relate to Emma in the fact that i like to read books but the difference is. I don’t like reading books about romance🤧. Speaking of books i enjoy writing stories as well! And I guess that’s it. Idk what else to say?

6/Oh yes i would like to be with licht in a romantic relationship! And i would like fluff or angst to fluff or anything as long as there is FLUFF☁️☁️ honestly idk i would be fine with anything as long as its cute it can be hurt to comfort or anything cute😮‍💨

And that's it! Looking forward to it! Take your time as well🤧🤍

(he's such a squishy boy 😭 I played his story first in the current event and I love him so much. Speaking of, this is loosely based on Clavis' route in the event. Hope you enjoy!)

A Fluffy Tale for Licht and his Lover

"Psst."

You looked around for whoever was trying to call to you.

"Psssst."

You set down your book and stood up, only to be startled by your boyfriend crouched in a rose bush.

"Licht? What's going on?"

He pressed a single finger to his lips, then motioned you over.  You crouched down in the bush with him, and he placed a protective arm around your shoulders.

"Licht, you're scaring me, what is it?"

His red eyes flickered over to you, and he heaved a sigh.

"Chevalier is gone on a trip. Which means Clavis is in charge of the faction." 

He looked around the courtyard, scanning for something.

"In short, we're being hunted."

A shiver went down your spine. The only thing protecting your sweet boyfriend from constantly being pestered by Clavis was Prince Chevalier. 

As if on cue, the door to the courtyard opened and Clavis walked out, an ecstatic smile on his face as he nonchalantly moved over to the bench and picked up the book you'd left behind. Licht stiffened next to you.

"I know you're there, I promise not to hurt you. I have prepared a lovely tea party for the three of us. A peace tea party, if you will."

Licht was so still that you would have thought he had died. Meanwhile, you were covering your mouth in hopes that it would silence your heavy breathing.

Clavis' eyes suddenly landed straight on the bush you were hiding in. If it was even possible, his smile grew wider.

"I see you. Come out. We'll have lots of fun."

Licht shot up, sword in hand.

"Run. I'll cover you."

"Licht…"

"Ha ha! Licht you're so funny!" Clavis laughed, excitedly drawing his own sword.

"I can't leave you!" You cried.

He gave you a reassuring half smile.

 "I'll be alright. Go."

With a final kiss to his cheek for good luck, you ran, hearing Clavis' excited laugh as metal struck metal.

                                     ….

You hid under Licht's bed for what felt like hours. You were certain that on the off chance Clavis won the fight, this would not be the first place he'd look to make you join whatever hellscape the "peace tea party" was certain to be. 

The door opened, and you heard soft footsteps. You stiffened, and prayed to Prince Chevalier that his spirit would protect you from what was to come. 

The footsteps walked to the closet, and slowly opened it, before reclosing it. Then they moved to the desk and stopped to, you assumed, peek under it. You held back the startled whine, and for the second time today, covered your mouth to hide your breathing.

The feet walked to the bed, and suddenly, you were face to face with Licht as he looked under the bed.

"Hey! It's me, it's okay!" He tried to reassure you as you let out a relieved shudder. 

"I left Clavis with Jin and Leon. We should be safe now."

You crawled out from under the bed, and wrapped your arms tightly around him. 

"Thanks for saving me," you whispered into his shoulder. He softly rubbed your back as he whispered "You're welcome."

He pulled back a little and softly smiled.

"Yves has prepared a real tea party for us. It would be foolish for us to miss out on that."

He held out a hand, and helped you stand, before wrapping a strong arm around your shoulders.

He turned to you in surprise when you weren't moving. You pressed your hands to his chest and pressed a kiss to his lips.

"I love you so much," you hummed against his lips.

His cheeks turned a lovely shade of pink and you giggled as you nuzzled back into him as you walked with your squishy boy to his well deserved tea party.

[dream-meister-translations]

RINDOU - VOICE COLLECTION

━

"If you keep staring at me like that, I'm going to blow a hole in you. Are you prepared to take responsibility for that?"

"I love flowers. The colors and scents make me feel right at home. I wish we were like that, too."

"…Oh, wow, if you've been watching me, say hello. You're very naughty, aren't you?"

"You, too? There are so many attractive people here, I'm getting lost in the crowd."

"Welcome home. I'm rooting for you, Master."

"Well, I'll leave you to it."

"You've been busy."

"Very well done!"

"Don't look at me like that…"

"I'll take this as payment for the flowers."

"You shouldn't worry so much. I'll be right behind you."

"I don't like going to places I'm not familiar with, but for Master's sake, I'll go."

"…This place is so vibrant and beautiful… And yet, even more than that, it's somehow… Sad… I could come here a thousand times and never get used to it…"

"The man who found his way out of a hole in the ground now plays a part in the Master's plan… I just hope what I found will be of use…"

"Thank you for your help. Did you find anything?"

"Hmm… Aren't I beautiful?"

"Shriveled flowers are worthless. I will work harder."

"How do you like me now, Master? Do I suit your tastes better like this?"

"Compared to them, all I can do is dress up. I wonder if I'll be cuter next time around…"

"Behold… The flowers in bloom, full of lustre and grace."

"I do not understand humans. But I know that Master is a good person."

"Meeting you was the first time I truly learned beauty without adornment."

"If all of me is what you want… I will give it to you anytime…"

━

RINDOU : Aoi-San, do you have it? Is that the new eye liner? It's a beautiful color and looks good on you. AOI : Hehe, thanks Rindou. The next time I see the peddler, I'll let you pick one out for me.

━

TIO : Haha! We're covered in so much mud! ….Hmm? Rindou, what's wrong? RINDOU : You're such a brute. There is nothing fun about being covered in mud.

━

TIO : Let's go Rindou! It's time to show them what we're made of! RINDOU : I don't have half the muscles you have, Tio. I'm sorry if I'm dragging you down.

━

TIO : Rindou! You are very thin! Come train with me! RINDOU : ….I'll think about it. If I were to tone my muscles, I'm sure my master would be surprised.

━

MIKOTO : Hmm? I thought I heard someone singing. That was you? Not bad. Let's hear some more. RINDOU : Haha, as if I care. I can't believe you like amateur singers. You're a drunken maniac, Mikoto-San.

━

RINDOU : I don't know what Merry Bad means, but I know all about people's love lives. YAMANE : Whoa, whoa, whoa! Oh my God! Please tell me more! I want to write about it!

━

MIKOTO : Looking for something's no fun. Rindou, do something to entertain me. A song or dance will do. RINDOU : Oh, you're so generous, Mikoto! But I don't have that kind of time. Let's explore first, okay?

━

RINDOU : Oh, I see I'm with Yamane today. Let me ask one favor: Do you have any colorful stories to tell? YAMANE : Yo, nice to meet you. We'll see. I might have a good story to tell once we're done here.

━

WELCK : Well, it is a pretty complicated route, isn't it? But don't worry, Rindou, I have an excellent sense of smell. RINDOU : Really? Thank you, Welck's nose! You're magnificent!

━

MIKOTO : Hmm…? It seems darker up ahead. Hey, Rindou. Go see what's going on. RINDOU : Oh, no! But, Mikoto, you've got such nice legs for walking.

━

YAMANE : A story fell from the heavens… I want to go home and write now… I need some paper… RINDOU : Mane-Han, you look so serious right now… What are you sensing?

━

RINDOU : You're really reliable, aren't you? And so cute, too. I'm enjoying exploring with you. WELCK : Oh, it's nothing, leave it to me. I'm always happy to be depended on. Come, we've got more work to do.

━

TIO : Brilliant AND intense! This is truly the pride of Muscle, Flesh, Body and Beauty in one! RINDOU : Yes, it's a very physical beauty isn't it…? Please, bear with me, I cannot go any further…

━

MIKOTO : In the company of my greatness, and yet you are still so weak. You're not ready for this, Rindou… RINDOU : Mikoto, you were the one asking me to sing and dance. I never got tired.

━

YAMANE : I'm going to work on this manuscript now. If you'll excuse me, please tell us again, the story of Rindou-San. RINDOU : Thank you for your time, but… I don't know… You suddenly seem very energetic…

━

RINDOU : I never got lost, and it's all thanks to Welck's nose. Thank you very much. WELCK : Thank you, Rindou. And thanks to you, too. The harvest was good. I'm sure Master will be pleased.