#i have so many thoughts i will do a whole meta on this eventually

[greyswarden]

thinking about ariel and irving and feeling insane. bashing my head into a wall in fact

[kurtsvonneslut]

Wait... what was the swanqueen fic recs? ...and are there more (...esp if theyre smutty) 👀👀👀

oh there are more!!!

first of all i'm just going to plug myself because why not. i have 78 swan queen works up - mostly oneshots, a couple longfics, including the fic i'm currently writing, change with the seasons. a lot of my fics are older (for example my 52 weeks of swan queen series was written in 2015) and i was a teenager when i wrote them, but i still find a lot of joy in them!!

now for the rest of the recs, i'm going to organize them as best i can into a few categories. also, a lot of these recs will be a bit older as i've been away from the fandom for a while, and am only just now coming back again. this is an open question if anyone else has recommendations to add in the reblogs!!!

longfics:

satin town by @coalitiongirl is probably my all time favorite fanfic, period. everything she's written for the fandom is incredible, but this one has always stuck with me. the dynamic between emma and regina (who is in full on evil queen mode) is just DELICIOUS and i love how she worked henry into the story. an absolute must as far as i'm concerned. PLUS she has a whole NOVEL out now, so go support that if you like the fic!!!!

the secret's in the telling by @the-pyrophoric-one is another classic in the fandom, and for good reason. the characterization is so spot on, and i absolutely love the arc of this story. the chapters are suuuuuper long though so it's a time investment!!

somewhere, someone must know the ending by maleficently who is not on tumblr as far as i'm aware is a divorce au. lots of angst with a happy ending. the same author also wrote an incredible three-part series called the fatal plunge, which remains, tragically, unfinished.

you gotta play dirty by amycarey who i'm not tagging because they don't write fic anymore. there's so many fics by amycarey that i absolutely adore (temporary distractions and keep the wolves outside by living well are also up there!!) but i chose this one because it's so unique to me. it's an au in which emma and regina are in a concert band together. i was a band kid myself, specifically a clarinetist, so i was pretty geeked over this!!

all that glitters is not (olypmic) gold by @queststar is another super niche but super fun and well-written au. in this one, emma and regina are olympic speed skaters. i just love the competitive energy between the two of them and the arc as they grow closer and eventually fall for each other. the author even got elizabeth mitchell to read some of it which is just. next level.

one fine star away by @bytherosebushlaughing is another au that gets a little meta, but it's sooooo much fun. in this fic, once upon a time is a tv show that regina, emma, and the others starred in. 20 some years later, the cast is reuniting, and the reunion is being covered by none other than one henry mills. it's such a clever fic, and i absolutely love it so far!!

oneshots:

of love and loss and love again by @snowivyimconfusi oh this one. this one is so bittersweet. emma and regina, grieving the losses of their partners, find comfort in each other. and more. it's so beautifully done, and i just adore ivy's writing style!!

what you thought you had to do by hoovahhoopah is the very first fic i read after making my ao3 account and it's still one that i love!! it's part of a six part series of oneshots called ill fitting pieces, but it also stands on its own just as well. just a beautiful, classic, canon-but-make-it-better kind of fic.

a woman moves when her heart has been broken by etotheswan because who among us wasn't absolutely destroyed by the season 3 finale???? this offered a lot of swan queen based catharsis while we waited for season 4.

monster-in-law by seriousfic is just a funny, light-hearted little oneshot about mary margaret trying to stop emma and regina's wedding by reminding them that they're all sort of related. a big departure from the seriousfic work we all know and miss dearly..... but enjoyable nonetheless thanks to their talent!!

and now, the moment we've all been waiting for, smut:

top of the list is, of course, our prophet of swan queen smut @angstbotfic. the making amends series is my all time favorite, and one that i recommended to my dear friend 27, but you can't go wrong with literally anything they've written.

wicked games by @starsthatburn is so. is so. it left me basically speechless. also recommended this one to 27, and i believe this is the one referenced in the ask they sent. it's the most insanely hot BDSM fantasy. if you like domme regina, look no further.

the thing she won't admit by beattheodds if you like butt stuff, here's swan queen butt stuff. need i say more?

paint it black by wily_one24 heed the warnings, this one is pretty dark. but if that's what you're into, this is the one. it's like if 50 shades of grey was swan queen and also good.

of love and loathing by morganlegaye and its sequel, transgressions of the heart are a hatefuck lover's dream. transgressions of the heart remains unfinished, but god is it good.

fealty by standbackufools you like throne sex? you like honorifics? you like D/s dynamic? enjoy :)

thank god it's BDSM friday by carrotlucky13 this one covers soooooo many kinks. emma and regina enter into a 24/7 BDSM lifestyle. for 95k words. i don't know what else to say but WOWOWOWOW. even if you're not into every kink in here it's still hot af.

emma's little problem by juicecup it's a magic!cock story with a slight humiliation kink if you squint, but otherwise mostly vanilla sex to round out a very kinky rec list.

go give these incredible creators some love!!! and remember, nothing motivates a fic writer quite like a nice comment :)

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

So. Hear 5. Nika. Loony Tunes Luffy, if you will. Tell us your thoughts on him and any potential meta? 👀 I’ve been aching to hear it from you since we first saw him go Full Silly Boy.

it's hard to answer this, because i have so many thoughts. i'm just going to try and start from the biggest points and move down.

i like gear five a lot, and i think this development feels very appropriate as a culmination of both luffy's character and the themes of one piece as a whole because of how it interacts with three extremely dominant motifs that have reoccurred throughout the story: freedom, laughter, and the sun.

from the very beginning of the story, luffy has acted, in small ways and big, as an agent of complete freedom. from his first meeting with coby to his breakout at impel down to the liberation of wano, what luffy does is destroy systems that control and oppress, if only because they are in his way. every strawhat is somehow trapped and held back from pursuing their own dreams when they meet luffy, and he frees them all, along with hundreds of others along the way, whether he's inspiring shirahoshi to venture outside or crushing yamato's manacles. his talent for this has always seemed almost preternatural.

luffy is not necessarily a benevolent person; he doesn't care much about helping people in the abstract. he's selfish. he values freedom for freedom's own sake, not because of any greater moral convictions. he doesn't think much about the negative knock-on effects of things like causing a mass breakout at impel down, and he doesn't really go around seeking out downtrodden and oppressed people to free out of a charitable or selfless instinct, nor does he really do anything because it's the right thing to do. he's dismissive of the idea that he might be a hero.

but because he is a completely uncontrollable free agent, and he doesn't really want anything but for himself and everyone he cares about to be completely free, he constantly collides with the systems of oppression that control his world, and when those collisions happen, it is the systems that fail, time and time again, because oppressive systems always do eventually. they can't withstand the light of day. and because he lives completely confidently and unapologetically, he is constantly inspiring others to do the same.

so by the time we are told about nika for the first time, we already know that what nika is said to do is what we've seen luffy doing for more than a thousand chapters: he frees people, and inspires them, and makes them laugh.

i also find luffy-as-nika to be very interesting and thematically appropriate when positioned in opposition to the various antagonists in one piece who have declared themselves to be gods, frequently some of its most tyrannical and oppressive villains- enel, the celestial dragons, doflamingo. all enslave and imprison people, robbing them of their freedom.

nika is a god of slaves, and a creature of liberation. the natural enemy, as rosinante might say, of that sort of megalomaniacal 'god.'

one piece has also consistently connected the theme of freedom, as embodied through luffy, with the sun since very early on. the sun pirates, former slaves, used the symbol of the sun to wipe away the brand of the celestial dragons. (and aren't i curious to know what jinbei might know about nika- he never did answer who's who's question about it.) the fishmen more broadly view the sun as something to be reached when they are truly free. on wano, the coming dawn is understood as the coming liberation. impel down and the florian triangle, places of indefinite imprisonment, are lightless dungeons where the sun doesn't reach. the sun is freedom.

and luffy has always been thoroughly sun associated, from the visual of his hat to his origin on dawn island in the east blue, to his ship, the thousand sunny.

finally, one piece has always placed a great deal of emphasis on smiles and laughter (laugh tale, joy boy, roger laughed, etc)- but that joy must be real. it can't be forced. we're told again and again, through koala, dressrosa's toys, and most obviously the victims of the failed SMILE fruits, that to force someone to smile, denying them the right to cry, is nothing less than an atrocity. people can't be forced to be happy- they should be happy because they're free.

luffy in gear five is laughing nigh-constantly, but it's just because he's having so much fun. unlike the victims of the SMILE fruits, his endless joy is genuine, because in this form, he is completely free- nobody can stop him, and nobody can control him. as he says himself, he can do whatever he wants.

i know that some people felt this moment was in some way a deus ex machina, but it just didn't feel that way to me, because of how well it plays on the story's established themes and trajectory, as well as concepts like devil fruit awakening having been established hundreds of chapters back.

luffy is the sun, the sun is freedom, freedom is joy. i think it makes total sense.

[clairenatural]

hey sorry to ask you but what is the destiel lamppost thing? if u know what it is

Hi anon!!! I wasn't ignoring you I just wanted to be able to sit down and type out the lore.

So "why lamp"/the destiel lamp thing starts with 15x10, The Heroes' Journey, in which Dean and Sam are stripped of the luck/protections that being written as protagonists gives them by Chuck (very meta) and Dean ends up needing cavities filled.

Garth gives him laughing gas for the procedure, during which Dean has a dream of a black and white 50s style dance sequence. It takes place in the bunker and while initially it's Dean dancing with Garth, eventually Garth leaves and Dean runs over to pick up a lamp from the corner of the room to dance with. Here's the whole thing:

But once it's Dean and the lamp, the dance becomes markedly more romantic - he's dancing with the lamp as a partner, not like the tap dancing he and Garth do side-by-side.

Also important to note that they're dancing to "Let's Misbehave," which is about sex and also was written by Cole Porter, who was gay. This is a really good breakdown of the dance itself, the significance of the song and Cole Porter and its connections to old queer Hollywood.

At the end of the episode, Dean sees Bess and Garth dancing in their living room through the window and says "You know, I always thought I could be a good dancer if I wanted to be."

This is pretty clearly associating the dream sequence, and Dean dancing with a lamp, as about Dean longing for a partner and therefore the lamp as a stand-in for that partner.

NOW. Meta was written as soon as this episode aired with people linking the lamp to Cas, and there has continued to be much better meta than I can write here - this one is in-depth and connects it to themes across the seasons and Dean's years-long character arc. "Cas is Lamp" even has its own superwiki page.

But besides all the normal meta deancas reasons and the fact that this comes at a time when Dean's character arc had been building both to him wanting to settle down with someone AND that someone being Cas (this is the episode right after The Trap and Dean's "I should have stopped you/of course I forgive you" prayer), Cas (and angels broadly) is associated with light and lamps throughout the series, perhaps most iconically in 4x16.

So, after 15x18, "the lamp thing" was something frequently cited and that we held onto as another thing they'd dropped alluding to (nay, ensuring - because they'd surely somehow have to wrap up Dean's own arc of wanting a partner to settle down with) a happy deancas endgame where Cas is rescued and they live happily ever after.

And then. 15x20 happened. And "why lamp" took off as part of a long list of "if they were just never going to mention Cas again, let alone resolve the confession or this very key part of Dean's story arc of wanting to settle down, why did they include [long list of things that make no sense with the ending we got]." Why lamp has become shorthand for a long list of missing links and loose ends and things that just don't add up. If deancas wasn't going to be the happy endgame, then why lamp. Why did they drop so many clues and work up to a very clear resolution for Dean's character arc if they were just going to drop it. Why lamp. It's one of those things that will haunt us because we will never get an answer. Okay grandma, let's get you to bed. But why lamp.

[appleflavoredkitkats]

let's talk abt c!fundy, as a whole:

i don't really know what i want the flow of this post to be. i don't really have any goals in mind, but i really, really, wanted to talk about c!fundy. i don't think i can intellectually cover his storyline arc by arc because, well, i don't actually think i'm capable of doing that in excruciating detail (especially for l'manberg and nlm) but. oh my god i need to talk about him. and my experience i had backing his character up ever since the pet wars.

takes about fundy as an underrated character only became popular around the time manberg ended. a big contributing factor to this is that dsmp recap and update accounts on tumblr and twt only started thriving by that time. so basically, a lot of pre-end of manberg stuff done by cc's who weren't tommy, wilbur, or quackity tended to be ignored, because nobody realized there were more pov’s to consider.

and tbh! as much as i was a bitter fan last 2020, i do want to acknowledge this isn't the fault of the fans. but of course this doesn't come without repercussions. a good portion of people only realized fundy was a spy for pogtopia only when he revealed it to wilbur. this comes as a surprise to me at that time because fundy confirmed as early as eret's election results stream that he was going to pretend to be a traitor.

but okay, that's well and settled. but i guess the bigger issue back then i grappled with a lot as a fundy fan was that many people described fundy's eventual reverence to schlatt and his “disownment” of wilbur to be out of nowhere or uncalled for. as someone who has paid attention to fundy to a tee ever since the pet wars, there is so much little things that occurred that built up fundy's dislike towards wilbur.

for one— wilbur's absence and belittlement of the pet war fiasco. although i'll give it that the pet wars is more of an exploration of fundy's character, especially as a friend to others, rather than something that proved wilbur's neglect. the elections was really where things start becoming finicky. from the mix of tommy saying fundy “would have been exiled from l'manberg if he weren't wilbur's son” (which caused him to create coconut2020) to him not siding with wilbur in the election debates, expressing his feelings of exclusion within l'manberg. there are so many moments, expressions of frustrations for how belittled he feels in the eyes of wilbur and tommy.

and, well, i think this is explored very uniquely in manberg, but in a more subtle way. yes we know about the disowning and the charged exchanges he and wilbur had, but i think that. his relationship with schlatt is one of the more undervalued things about manberg. we know about all the rampant dadschlatt headcanons with tubbo, but oh my god, i need more people to see that it is literally canon that fundy saw schlatt as a father figure and schlatt viewed fundy as his son.

that dynamic is so unexplored. the way fundy first started as a traitor, then almost got caught by schlatt with schlatt telling him that. he hopes fundy can be someone he trusts to make manberg great. man to man. schlatt has continuously raised the ranks fundy had in manberg, makes him tag along in different events. fundy made the schlatt throne and the decorations for manberg.

fundy gave up being a spy because he thought schlatt respected him more than wilbur. then, schlatt killed some cats during the festival and blew it all. i think, on one hand, it's funny this is all it took. on the other, fundy has shown to have massive reverence for the pets that exist in this server. the pet war especially, where it's not only fungi who he avenged but beelloon and niki's fish and farm animals and his own endermen. he himself even couldn't kill skechers. he was upset in nlm when tubbo accidentally killed his fox.

and again, wilbur's absence during the pet wars spoke loudly to him, so when he sees wilbur in schlatt for the first time, he drops him.

there's also sort of a meta angle with fundy being sidelined as a character. i always mention this in my own posts, but yeah. i believe cc!fundy mentioned during manberg that it was hard playing a villain because his views plummeted. and i also find it interesting that cc!fundy didn't stream a lot of pivotal moments in the dsmp during nlm, like schlatt's funeral and the butcher army fiasco. he wasn't even present during the disc war finale.

i can never in my life assume whatever cc!fundy wanted for his character, but i remember, before las nevadas was announced, i came to terms with realizing that i cannot control whatever cc!fundy wanted with his character. if he wanted to step away from the dsmp then i supported it, because if he didn't find himself having fun doing all that, or he thinks not a lot of people liked his character despite his efforts, then i get it.

doomsday isn't my favorite fundy moment. it's subjective, and definitely a hot take among the fundy community, but to me letting go and breaking down felt like a low hanging fruit for him, because genuinely i didn't expect it. there's no build up to it. not in the neglect department, no, fundy definitely has been traumatized enough. but i feel like the manner in which this was expressed felt too angry to be in character— which, tbh, is bold of me to say because who am i to question cc!fundy's character decisions. but genuinely there wasn't a lot of streams in between that and other emotional beats to warrant a heavy breakdown like that.

ok, before i get skewered, what i'm saying is that i think doomsday tends to overshadow everything else fundy did because a lot of fans really wanted some kind of villain arc like that from him. and as cool as the “i want to make them cry” thing is, i don’t think fundy breaking down angrily like that and giving up on everything is representative of his entire character, especially when we see the larger picture with las nevadas and his reunion with wilbur.

fundy is emotional, but not angry. he gets angry at wilbur for almost leaving during their reunion, but he pleads immediately after. he yelps “what the fuck?” at quackity when quackity belittles his achievements, but he pleads “i don't know what to do” softly when quackity compares him to l'manberg fading away.

fundy's character hopes easily, gets attached easily, which is why his breakdown to me feels like a puzzle piece that doesn't fit. to be fair, i can't expect all things in the dsmp to be executed perfectly! and if it weren't for las nevadas, doomsday would've probably been the finale for fundy's storyline, and it makes more sense to view it that way.

but imma just say, thank the fuck it wasn't.

my most favorite thing about fundy would be his consistency, especially with what kind of baggage his character brings within every arc. i think the las nevadas episode that showcases how quackity manipulated him into joining establishes exactly what fundy’s character is in essence.

when quackity compared him to the fading buildings in l'manberg, we got it. we got the confirmation i wanted on what his character is supposed to be, and that is— principally and representatively, he is l'manberg. wilbur's definition of what l'manberg's supposed to be. originally, l'manberg prided itself on peaceful unity that didn't rely on minecraft pvp as a source of power, which is the complete antithesis of the entire cycle of violence we observe in the dsmp later on.

of course, wilbur lets go of these ideas being realistic after they win, then completely gives up mid-pogtopia arc, because to him, l'manberg is a manifestation of his ideologies succeeding. if it doesn't, then l'manberg is nothing. so what does it mean then, in this case, if l'manberg was something wilbur promised to fundy?

well. to me that means wilbur succeeded. fundy is l'manberg. let me explain.

fundy, like tubbo, was present in all iterations of l'manberg. he was close to every single president, usually one of their backups whenever an event occurs. this also happens with las nevadas. he becomes blindlessly devoted to someone if they give him a lick of attention, something wilbur never gave him, but more importantly, his presidents promised him safety and prosperity. when he and schlatt fought before schlatt died, fundy mentioned he sided with schlatt until he ruined plans with manberg.

this is why he also believed in nlm, in las nevadas. he believes in the upturn of cyclical violence in the dsmp, unconditionally and devotedly. he created flags for manberg and lnv, hell, even gogtopia, and he as a dutch also inspired l'manberg's flag. while i also don't think he fully embodies the idea of peace (he is a prankster after all), he definitely embodies how that pacifistic mindset is viewed or treated in the dsmp.

which explains how he dies, i suppose. he dies diving into the l'manberg crater, after cutting ties with wilbur. it's metaphorical in one way, and sad in the other. on one hand, it makes sense. if the embodiment of l'manberg and its principles cut its ties from wilbur, especially considering that the dsmp ends a few months later without ending the cycle of violence, of course they would die. they would disappear.

it would explain why cc!wilbur explains the scene as fundy wanting to get as far away from wilbur as much as possible, not to end it all.

on the other hand, it's sad because… if your entire character is dependent on that toxic connection to nationalism, l'manberg, and wilbur, then, what are you? a few days later, fundy donates the schlatt sword he holds dear and calls an “heirloom” away to the museum. he stands in the rain and disappears from the dsmp forever.

sometimes i wonder what fundy would be, independent of l'manberg. to be okay with being alone, with not involving himself in countries with big plans of power.

it's a hard thing to figure out because we never see fundy after that moment. even before those moments, fundy defined himself always from the way he gets belittled. even the fact that he is a prankster gets roped into this, because he is often made a punchline to other characters like schlatt, phil, tommy, and more. no one takes him seriously. if everyone treats your existence as nothing but a joke, what part of you, then, is real?

we never got to understand what fundy's dreams mean, in the end. we've only seen two instances of this, although in the stream where he finds out wilbur is alive again, he mentions having multiple dreams seeing wilbur. i guess what i can offer is that fundy having such a useful power such as prophetic dreams just proves how he has no one to report things to.

it's like greek myth's cassandra. he's gifted with the skill of knowledge and foresight that he literally cannot use because no one takes him seriously. theoretically, he could have predicted dream's escape, charlie's death, but if he has no one he could trust, what's the point?

fundy’s so much more than what people see him as, inside lore and outside. his entire character explores what it means to be sidelined, to constantly question your worth because of other's input to the point you become it. and when we finally get the catharsis of him letting go, he becomes… nothing. he disappears.

it's sad to see fundy's storyline end this way, but as a fan, i think it felt complete. it felt right. a friend once told me closure is a luxury in the dsmp and fundy is not exempt from that. i'm happy cc!fundy was able to at least tell us a complete story like that, and i'm happy to have met so many fundy fans throughout my entire time here.

he's a great character. i'm happy that he at least exists and prospers in our eyes.

[aspoonofsugar]

The Devil's Cake

I have just finished One Piece's Whole Cake Island Arc, I loved it and I wanna analyze its major themes and ideas. Still, keep in mind I have only read this one arc of the series, so I won't be able to connect what happens in this storyline with everything else going on. In any case, here come my thoughts!

As @hamliet highlights in her meta, One Piece is a story, which follows the Fool's Journey:

What is the Fool’s Journey? It’s the “Major Arcana” of the tarot deck, consisting of 22 cards that follow a particular order and tell a story that is supposed to represent a journey through life. (from hamliet's meta)

In particular, the Whole Cake Island Arc alludes to the 15th card, the Devil:

The Devil is not an evil, sinister figure residing outside of us. He is the knot of ignorance and hopelessness lodged within each of us at some level. The seductive attractions of the material bind us so compellingly that we often do not even realize our slavery to them. We live in a limited range of experience, unaware of the glorious world that is our true heritage. The couple on Card 15 are chained, but acquiescent. They could so easily free themselves, but they do not even apprehend their bondage. They look like the Lovers, but are unaware that their love is circumscribed within a narrow range. The price of this ignorance is an inner core of despair. (Meaning of the Devil from learntarot.com)

In other words:

The Devil represents ignorance, raw uncontrolled instincts and slavery to the material world. All of these ideas are explored in the arc. In particular, they are embodied by Big Mom.

The card has three characters on it. The Devil itself (usually an ermaphrodite) and the chained lovers (usually a man and a woman). Similarly, the Whole Cake Island Arc's premise is that Big Mom (the devil) forces Sanji and Pudding (the lovers) into a wedding against their will. Moreover, the arc has masculinity and femininity as secondary themes.

Let's go deeper.

BIG MOM, THE DEVIL

Big Mom is the Devil, as her introductory song Bloody Party makes clear:

Let's all eat a tasty cake! It's the sweetest deal to make! The tea party from hell! Is it strawberry jam? (Or someone's blood?) Either one is fine! If you're invited, you have to come! A demonic sacrifice for our sweet pastime! This is... our beloved... land of dreams! A country where all peoples come together! It's... Totto Land!

She tricks people with the sweetest of deals, but eventually traps and consumes them. This is shown both when it comes to Sanji's plotline and to the way she manages her kingdom:

She makes Sanji and his family believe she is gonna give them what they want. She is letting the Straw Hats leave. She is supporting Germa 66 in their quest to get their land back. However, it is soon revealed she has no intention of keeping either promise.

She offers her subjects peace and acceptance and welcomes them into a land of dreams. After all, Totto Land is gorgeous: it has many races living happily together, it is made of sweets and it is so full of life even inanimate things get a soul! Isn't Big Mom kind of like a God, who grants life? Except she isn't really giving life to objects, but rather she is objectifying life:

The condition to stay in Totto Land is for people to give up their life-span. As a matter of fact Big Mom's Soul Soul Fruit lets her steal souls, which is precisely what the Devil does. Not only that, but she masks her Hell as Heaven and baits people with sweetness, which is why her territory has a food motif. She seems nice, until you realize you can't really leave her:

If you stay, you have to give up a part of your life. If you wanna leave, you have to die. There is no way out. At least until one realizes what's really keeping people prisoners of Big Mom is their own minds. Just like the lovers in the card could easily free themselves, leaving Big Mom isn't impossible:

All you have to do is not to fear the Devil and its threats disappear. Similarly, Big Mom is a big fat lie herself: her dream, her country, her family and her power are all fake.

SANJI AND PUDDING, THE CHAINED LOVERS

Sanji and Pudding are the chained lovers:

Greedy Mama's false plot was both devious and smart! Matching fairy tale prince and princess fair, in a sham that was meant to keep them apart.

In particular, they are forced to play Prince and Princess in two different ways.

On the one hand Sanji and Pudding are chained together against their will in a fake wedding. They are the handsome prince and the beautiful princess getting married on top of a giant cake:

They are not even the protagonists of their own marriage, but merely cake toppings in Big Mom's tea party.

On the other hand Sanji and Pudding are prisoners of their families, which push gender roles on them:

Germa 66 is a patriarchy, which values strength and violence. Its ruler Judge represses his emotions and wants his children to do the same. They must be emotionless killing machines. As a result, Sanji is expected to embody hyper-masculinity and to hide all his feminine traits, like his kindness and even his passion for cooking. After all, he is Germa 66's Prince.

Totto Land is a matriarchy, which values superficial harmony and beauty. Its queen Big Mom gets dangerous when upset and is very emotional. So, everybody has to conform to her wishes. As a result, Pudding is expected to embody hyper-femininity. She must be Big Mom's doll, so she masks her ugliest parts, like her bloodlust (psychological) and her third eye (physical). After all, she is Totto Land's Princess.

So, both Sanji and Pudding are asked to compartmentalize themselves, so they can fit in simplistic boxes for their parents to use. Sanji has to be a super-soldier to win Judge's war, whereas Pudding has to be a seductress to advance Lin Lin's political schemes. They are even both the result of eugenetics. Judge uses a powerful drug to steal his sons' humanity before they are even born. Big Mom instead gets together with a three-eyed, so that she can have a child able to read Poneglyphs.

The two families may seem opposite, but both are abusive and force the kids to repress parts of themselves:

Happiness (Sanji's love for food is symbolically negated by the iron mask).

Sadness (Pudding's tears are symbolically negated by her third eye being covered).

At the same time, Sanji and Pudding's reactions to their abuse are opposite, just like their standings in their families.

Sanji is the scapegoat, as he can't be who Judge wants him to be. He refuses to fit his father's ideal and is punished by the rest of the family because of it. His brothers bully him and his sister is too scared to openly show affection for him. The situation gets so bad he is forced to cut all ties with his family and leave. He is abandoned and cancelled.

Pudding is the golden child, as she is one of Big Mom's favorite kids. She is the perfect good girl and could potentially lead her mother to the One Piece. As a result, she is beloved by her siblings and people. However, she gives up who she is in exchange. She always wears a mask to the point nobody knows the real her. She is trapped and with no autonomy.

The end result for both Prince and Princess is that they have to lie to survive. Sanji hides his origin from his crewmates and in Totto Land he pushes them away to protect them. Pudding instead hides her real self and tricks others to hurt them out of repressed anger. More importantly, Sanji and Pudding are deep down tricking themselves:

They tell themselves they are happy as prisoners, but that’s false. Eventually the truth comes to the surface:

Pudding finds out the Straw Hats know Lola. This has her remember something painful, which leads her to vent some of her frustration. This is why she reveals her true colors to both Reiju and the Straw Hats. This lets Sanji and the others discover Big Mom's true plan.

Sanji finds out Pudding hates him and Reiju loves him. He also realizes his family is in danger. In the face of these terrible revelations he stops lying to himself. He runs to where Luffy is and expresses his real feelings:

Just like the lovers on the card, Sanji and Pudding are trapped because of their ignorance, both of the world around them (Sanji) and of who they are inside (Pudding). In general, the whole arc is full of lies in its first act and things only get better once the lovers start unraveling the truth. Still, there is also someone else who helps in this process. A Fool, who is able to draw out people's most genuine selves.

LUFFY'S JOURNEY

Luffy is the Fool, so the protagonist of the journey. He is the individual with infinite potential, who goes through an adventure to grow up and self-actualize. So, the Whole Cake Island arc ties into his development, as he both matures and proves himself different from Big Mom. As a matter of fact our Fool is the opposite of the Devil Queen on multiple levels.

First of all, the two captains' attitudes towards a crew memeber quitting don't match. Big Mom won't let Jinbe leave her, whereas Luffy is ok with Sanji getting married, if this makes him happy.

As the arc goes on, it becomes obvious Big Mom embodies peace and conformity, while Luffy represents freedom and individuality:

Big Mom wants a place where everyone can eat while at the same eye-level. However, she wants to fulfill this by making everyone big like her. It is others, who must change, not Big Mom herself. Everyone can live in Totto Land, but only by becoming who Big Mom wants. It is "whole", but "individuals" disappear in this totality.

Luffy likes people's individuality and encourages everyone to follow their dreams, even if he might disagree with them. He wants people to grow into the best and most genuine version of themselves. To do so he is ready to fight and enter conflicts.

This difference is expressed through the main motif of the arc, that is food. Big Mom and Luffy both eat a lot and fast throughout the arc:

However, Big Mom does so out of selfishness, while Luffy does so out of selflessness. In particular, Luffy eats and fasts to discover the truth about others:

He eats Cracker's biscuits to unmask his opponent physically.

He promises to fast until Sanji cooks for him to unmask his friend psychologically.

Finally, Luffy eats to better understand himself and grow. This is the point of his fight with Katakuri. This battle happens in the mirror world and Luffy faces off against a better version of himself. This is indicative that the Straw Hat's captain is really conquering a part of himself, so he can evolve. Moreover, throughout their conflict Luffy both:

Eats Katakuri to dispel his power.

Sees Katakuri eat in a relaxed demeanor.

Luffy and Katakuri draw out the best in each other. Katakuri helps Luffy evolve his observation haki. Luffy helps Katakuri accept his real self. By the end of their battle, they both can see better:

Luffy has now a metaphorical better vision of himself and of the kind of future he wants to create (observation haki)

Katakuri can now show his most instinctive and weird part to others (his laughing and eating mouth)

Finally, Luffy proves that the important thing isn't to never touch the ground (not to lose):

But rather, it is to always get back up (to change for the better):

This is something Katakuri himself acknowledges by the end, as he decides not to fall face-down, but rather to have his back touch the ground. Symbolically, he is accepting his imperfection. Just like Luffy does.

This is something Big Mom can't do, as she is an adult stuck into the mentality of a child. She is a person who could never face herself.

A RISKY CAKE

LinLin is the Devil, not only because she lies to others, but also because she herself is trapped in several lies:

She is lied by her parents when they leave her on Carmel's island

She is lied by Carmel about her parents' abandonment when she is welcomed at the orphanage

Finally, Carmel's whole personality is a lie:

Carmel presents herself as a "holy mother", but she is neither "holy", nor a "mother":

Her miracles come from the Soul Soul Fruit's power and her desire of peace is a scam to gain the trust of the giants

Her motherly side is a facade she uses to mold children into soldiers for the World Government

So, Carmel isn't as sweet as her name may imply. She is a fake nun, so she fittingly gives birth to the Devil herself. As a matter of fact LinLin's life is spent in an attempt to emulate Carmel:

She tries to fulfill Carmel's dream of a peaceful world, where everyone is equal

She makes sure to have a big family, so that she can replace the Sheep's House

She calls all her children after food, just like Carmel was named after a dessert

Carmel's dream and family are lies, but they end up defining the Pirate Queen's existence. Even LinLin's anger towards who leaves is a projection of her own abandonment as a child. In her mind, she was left behind twice, so she can't bear for it to happen a third time. The result of this mix of lies and delusions is none other than Big Mom.

She is a child, who never had a mother, so she is now a mother, who isn't a real parent. She is a person who received a lie instead of love, so now she gives fake love.

Big Mom's inability to truly love is shown once again in the motif of food. Let's compare these two scenes:

On the one hand Luffy savors Sanji's bento. The food is soaked with water and covered in dirt, but he still appreciates it. He realizes his cook made everyone's favorite food, so the bento becomes symbolic of Sanji's love for the Straw Hats. It might be ruined, but its material appearance does not change its spiritual meaning. Luffy can see it, so he can enjoy the meal. It is as if by eating it, he is celebrating all his crew members by showing he loves them as wholes, both qualities and flaws. Just like he can forgive Sanji's lies and behavior.

On the other hand Big Mom devours Sanji's cake. Big Mom opens the arc by wishing to eat the wedding cake and she ends it by eating it. The cake is perfect, even better than her wildest dreams. However, Big Mom can't understand the cake is so tasty because Sanji put love in it:

That is because Big Mom herself doesn't understand true love. And maybe she doesn't even want to understand it:

It's sweet, it's milky (Milky) It's very rich and… (Very rich and…) Risky!!

The flavor of the cake is "risky" because love itself can be risky and complicated. To love someone means to let them free. Like Luffy does with his comrades. Like Pudding does with Lola and Sanji. However, Big Mom will never do it because she only enters relationships, where she risks nothing and the other party risks it all. This unbalance is the root of every bond she forges.

This is the meaning behind Bad End Musical. This song is the perfect conclusion for Big Mom's character in the Whole Cake Island arc.

First of all it is a "bad end", but it is a lie. Throughout the song it seems the Strawhats' boat is destroyed, but it is just a ruse and they successfully escape. It is a delusion. A sweet lie Big Mom's army enjoys for a brief instant before they are faced with the hard truth. They lost.

Secondly, it conveys beautifully what "love" and "lies" mean for Big Mom:

1)Love - Throughout the song, Big Mom eating the cake is cruelly juxtaposed to the Straw Hats being attacked repeatedly. As a result, it appears as if Big Mom is eating Luffy and his friends, rather than the cake. This is a metaphor of how Big Mom "loves" others. She eats them. Just like she ate Carmel and the other orphans. She wants to love the world, but she doesn't know how. As a result, she tries to assimilate it in her stomach, so that it becomes a part of her. Still, this isn't real love, it is just consumption. This is why Big Mom is destined to forever be hungry.

2)Lies - At one point, Big Mom is on the verge of having a revelation:

She confusedly realizes that the cake tastes the same as the one her family gave her in the happiest day of her life. That is the taste of true love. Still, this intuition does not lead to any deeper self-reflection. As a matter of fact, to do so, LinLin should admit what she did, while blinded by hunger. And she can't. She can never know she killed her loved ones. Just like she can never aknowledge the destruction she brings, while affected by her hunger pangs. Instead of this painful reality, she chooses a happy illusion:

That's why the musical ends with the juxtaposition of the ideal world LinLin dreams of creating with the cruel reality she in fact made:

A deal with the devil Makes Totto Land Serene Here we're all a family Thanks to our loving queen Big Mom!

This reality is the result of a pact with the Devil. A pact with ignorance, which does not let people mature. Big Mom is still a kid deep down and her children can never develop their own individuality, as they are stuck in their mother's shadow forever. Everyone is trapped and unable to evolve. The Queen who dreams of a Kingdom of giants ironically prevents her subjects from growing.

END ROLLS - COOKING AND EATING

The final chapter of the Whole Cake Island Arc is called End Roll, which fits Big Mom's musical motif. After the big finale, the curtains close, with a last song playing. The song is Soul Pocus, which once again highlights Big Mom's satanic symbolism:

Soul Pocus, Soul Pocus, Such self-centered words. When tempted by the scent, of that sweet cake slice. The first step is to ask about, the nature of its price. For this is not the good kind of surprise. Will you suffer her trick or hand over your treats? Sweets can be so very bad for the soul. Soul Pocus, our Mama so material. Will it be years off your life? Or your life itself? Soul Pocus, the song of our Queen. (Life or dead?)

At the same time, the chapter itself juxtaposes Big Mom with our true lovers.

1)Big Mom stays a prisoner of her own delusions. She sees herself as a kind and loving queen, but is really an abusive monster. Pudding is instead able to finally face herself.

When we meet her, Pudding is on the verge of turning out like her mother:

She is a manipulator, just like Big Mom. Her mother manipulates souls (hearts), whereas Pudding manipulates memories (minds).

She lies to herself to the point she has divided her whole personality into two distinctive sides. A kind and cute persona and a cruel and rude hidden self.

So, Pudding is the Devil's apprentice. She is on the path of becoming a liar, who lives in a lie. However, thanks to Sanji, she defies this destiny. She shows her real self, who is neither her good girl act nor her villainess mask. Rather she is a lonely girl, who loves deeply, but believes che can't be loved. Not only that, but her final act is to use her power to have Sanji forget their one kiss. She lies to him, but she does so to let him be free.

Ironically, she starts the arc by telling the Straw Hats that if she were to seriously fall in love with Sanji, she could never let him go. However, by the end she reveals herself to be even more selfless than her "good persona". She finds the strength to admit her love for Sanji (the kiss), but she also realizes he needs to be free (the erased memory). And yet, the fact she is finally facing her true emotions is her first step into adulthood and self-actualization. Pudding is not goinG to be stuck as a child, like Big Mom. Rather she is blooming into a beautiful woman.

2) Big Mom and Sanji are opposite. She eats (takes life) out of gluttony. He cooks (gives life) to dispel hunger. At the same time, they are also far more similar than one might initially think.

For example, both of them are abandoned and risk to die of starvation. Still, they both get adopted by a foster parent. However:

Carmel is a fake mother, who never truly educates LinLin nor teaches her how to control her instincts. As a result, she is eventually devoured alive and symbolically becomes LinLin's Devil Fruit herself (after all, LinLin gets the Soul Soul Fruit through consuming Carmel).

Zeff is a real father, who both takes care of Sanji and educates him. He eats his own leg, so that Sanji can survive. He teaches his son to never hurt a woman, so that he can become a true man. He is Sanji's father and his mentor, the one who made Sanji the exceptional cook he is today.

In other words, LinLin is both an unloved child and an unloving mother. Sanji and Zeff are instead a loving son and a loving father. This is why their bond is really at the heart of the whole arc. Zeff might not appear, but his presence is strongly felt:

The threat to kill Zeff is the reason why Sanji steps into Big Mom's territory to begin with.

Zeff's teachings are the reason why Sanji chooses to save his family, despite the pain they gave him. He wants to be a son Zeff can be proud of.

Finally, Zeff closes the arc together with Sanji, as they both serve food to hungry people. Both friends and foes. After all, everyone deserves to eat, everyone deserves to live, everyone deserves to be loved. Even the Devil herself:

[lxvenderjewel]

link to my last meta here, it has some context for this

So first of all. What if I ate glass

Anyways.

Do you think this means he didn't have very many close friends growing up? Just a bunch of acquaintances? And so he invited a bunch of people, but they all had prior commitments, and they didn't care enough about him to leave them to go to his party?

Do you think that's why he fucked up a lot of his close relationships as he got older? Because he never got close enough to anyone when he was younger, and he never learned how to be especially close with people?

Do you think he saw those people who had best friends, who would get matching necklaces, bracelets, whatever, and he would be so jealous? Because what was he not doing that these other people were, that got them such close friends?

Do you think as he went into the army he brought with him this sense of loneliness? Do you think he hooked up with a lot of people to try and get rid of that? And his army mates would praise him for it, even though it just made him feel emptier every time?

And then he got that aforementioned quarantine girlfriend, and he tried so hard with her, smothered her with affection. Yet for some reason he was still empty. He couldn't fully put himself into their relationship.

And eventually, on his birthday, she broke up with him.

Do you think he thought that, moving into 221B, would be another short phase in his life? That Sherlock would eventually move out, and he would go through life with this crushing sense of loneliness and disconnectino from the world?

Do you think he knew that he'd find his whole life in that little flat?

[aingeal98]

Hi, so I was reading some of your Stephanie Brown meta & kudos, serious props yours is excellent. I also noticed you seem to be among those who picked up on the worrying undercurrent of Stephanie's relationships with older men. So double kudos for that.

Especially as its one of those things that tends to get glossed over in fandom & I am unsure at times if some writers even grasped what they were doing. Though that may say more about how girls tend to be treated/viewed as adults rather than children, teenagers or victims, save when its convenient to judge them as such.

Sorry not sure where I am going with this, but I think your stance it from that "Five ships that won't happen" section of the Steph ask as well thought out and covered a lot, so third kudos just for tackling that heavy topic so deftly and efficiently.

Ah thank you! Stephanie's relationship with men is so fascinating to me because she's been hurt so many times and the dissonance between her canon and fanon versions are pretty grim yet interesting. Like in early canon she was the Faith to Ariana's Buffy, the Veronica to the Bettys that were Tim's other love interests at the time. And various writers had various ideas about why she was the way she was, a common theme being that she had difficult relationships with the men in her life and had been hurt in the past. Be it a villain, a friend of her fathers, Cluemaster himself, or a shitty clearly too old guy named Dean. I don't think it was meant to be a pattern, more likely just individual ideas about trauma Steph suffered in her past that ended up turning into a consistent trait.

So you've got an abusive father, at least two cases of SA that I can remember (her babysitter and Black Mask), a pregnancy with clear subtext that the father was older than her, and the general way Batman treats her.

Not to mention she was a minor when all this happened. Like Steph has so many issues that she deserves the chance to unpack but instead they've just kind of... softened her down. Like her Batgirl run was the first chance she'd gotten to be the actual hero instead of The Girl in a story written by sexists, and she deserved every second of that. There had been too much injustice done to her character and her Batgirl run did a good job at setting the baseline for giving her a decent narrative. But afterwards, the New 52 could have delved more into her psyche instead of leaning into her waffles and sparkles fanon characterization. But because the New 52 is the worst, it didn't. And now here we are.

It's one of the reasons I'd really love to write a story about Steph realising she's bisexual, because I think in some ways her view of men are due to feeling trapped by heterosexuality and the patriarchal society. It's hard to explain fully without going into a whole other meta but the way she reacts to Tim showing her bare minimum decency is heartbreaking. Like yes men are awful and have been awful to her but she still likes them, she's going to settle down and marry one eventually right? She just has to find the right one, and Tim didn't treat her like complete garbage so he might be it for her!

And then for her to realise that no, she doesn't. She can marry a man if she wants to but if she wants romance there's also women... I really think bi Steph could be so much more than a simple "Oh hey I like girls now cool lol." Like it would shake a significant amount of the misogyny she's internalised and directed towards herself, it could alter the view she's taken of the world, and it would allow her to see her past trauma through a different lens, maybe with less subconscious self hatred.

Sorry this turned into a giant ramble haha, but thank you for the ask!

[knaccblog]

Aziraphale and "I Forgive You"

So after I watched the first season a few times however many years ago, I noticed something, wrote up a bit of a meta about it and then never posted it. I thought that it was either very obvious or very silly and either way, no one needed to see it. But now it's several years and another season later and again, I'm noticing the exact same thing so here it goes- I think the reason Aziraphale keeps saying that he forgives Crowley has overall very little to do with what Crowley has just done right before Aziraphale says it and much more to do with a secret Aziraphale hides deep within himself and has for thousands of years, a truth that he hates to acknowledge and is terrified to speak aloud: he thinks God is wrong to have not Forgiven Crowley.

Get settled in because this is gonna take a bit.

The first time I started noticing this really clearly is the Bandstand Breakup scene. Crowley starts by cussing God literally out- "For the record, great, pustulant, mangled bollocks to the Great blasted Plan." To which Aziraphale says, "May you be forgiven." And yes, Crowley has just sinned and Aziraphale is a stuffy angel but the way Aziraphale says it is like a hope, atleast to my ears. Like he's really wishing that God will see how good Crowley truly is and bring him back to Heaven even though he keeps doing stupid stuff like this

Anyway, Crowley then responds with, "I won't be forgiven. Not ever. Part of a demon's job description. Unforgivable. That's what I am." And Aziraphale responds again with a hopeful sounding, "You were an angel once." At this point, I was almost sure that he's talking about his personal wishes here. It sounds like he's saying, "Come on, Crowley. There's a chance." To which Crowley responds, "That was a long time ago," basically saying it's impossible and shutting that whole bit of the conversation down. And you can just watch Aziraphale's face fall at that, like it kills him for that to be true. 

The next time the topic of forgiveness and Crowley comes up is when Crowley shows up to beg Aziraphale to run away with him one last time. In this conversation, Aziraphale is very adamant that if he talks to the right people, they won't want the apocalypse and they'll stop it. He, of course, thinks this because his most core belief is that God is good and that even if we don't understand how what God is doing is good right now, it will lead to goodness eventually via the Rube Goldburg machine which is time and the universe etc aka God is ineffable. But even Aziraphale can't imagine how the ineffable Rube Goldburg machine could turn an event where everything on earth dies into a good one so therefore, he's certain that God doesn't want the Apocalypse.

Crowley responds to this hope with, "You're so clever. How can someone as clever as you be so stupid?" to which Aziraphale responds, "I forgive you" in a very gentle but sure tone. And now yes, while it is entirely possible that Aziraphale is forgiving Crowley for calling him stupid, I've always felt like that would be a rather weighty response considering how mild an insult it is. It's also possible (and I feel slightly more likely) that Aziraphale is forgiving Crowley for his lack of faith, his inability to believe in the goodness of God anymore. 

And that could definitely be it, but if we think about the way Aziraphale had talked about forgiveness at the Bandstand, the hope and desire that he seemed to put into the idea of forgiveness and Crowley and the fact that Crowley had dismissed it as entirely impossible for him to ever be forgiven, than a third read of Aziraphale's "I forgive you" emerges: one in which Aziraphale is saying, "While God might never forgive you, I do". It's "I might never see you again since you intend to run away to the stars but if this is the last time I ever see you, I want you to know that I think you are deserving of forgiveness. That I see the good in you even if God can't." It's a combination "I love you" and small rebellion against God, because while Aziraphale can't bring himself to give up on Her completely and run away with Crowley (even though a part of him clearly wants to), he is willing to say that She's done this one thing wrong and it's never forgiving Crowley, who Aziraphale can see clearly is more kind and good than any of the angels he knows.

So yeah, that was about where the idea rested at the end of the first season but now we have a bunch of new historical scenes and a new "I forgive you" following a very loaded conversation in which Aziraphale got extremely excited by the idea of Crowley being reinstated as an Angel and I felt like this idea has even more legs than before. 

To me, it's very clear that Aziraphale's pitch for Crowley to come back to Heaven isn't him hoping to "reset" Crowley to how he was before the Fall or him being incapable of loving Crowley as a Demon and instead was him being overjoyed to have this secret truth (Crowley is deserving of God's Forgiveness) that he's been observing for 6000ish years be acknowledged and have a chance to come to fruition. After all, as we saw this season (and honestly last season too but less pronounced), Crowley, current Demon Crowley, not the angel he knew over 6000 years ago, has proven over and over again just how truly good he is to Aziraphale.

For example, in the Job sequence, Crowley does a truly good thing that no Angel (beside Aziraphale) would do or even think that they should do and that is save Job's children. And through the entirety of this bit, Aziraphale basically always believes that he will. There are even two moments where Crowley tries his best to scare Aziraphale away, to play up being the bad guy (so as to better hide the con he's running and protect Aziraphale), but Aziraphale's faith in Crowley's goodness does not falter. At the end of the day, it seems clear that Aziraphale has more faith that Crowley will do the good thing, the correct thing than God. Conveniently for Aziraphale's faith in God though, not understanding how something horrible he hates will eventually lead to goodness in the long run is a foundational principle of said faith so his faith in God remains strong even after everything She and Heaven do to Job. 

But his faith in Crowley doesn't require such a complicated work around. He believes Crowley won't kill children and he is correct. Though unfortunately, this very simplicity leads to a new problem, a problem that we can see eventually solidify in Aziraphale's mind, becoming a running theme of their association and leading to the eventual "I forgive you"s.

Aziraphale can clearly see how kind and good Crowley is, how he does the right thing as best he can, even when he could (and sometimes does) get into immense trouble for it. But for some reason, despite repeated evidence that Crowley is everything that Aziraphale believes Angels are and should be, Crowley continues to be a Demon. And once you realize that Aziraphale has noticed this contradiction and that it most likely haunts him and is a constant challenge to his worldview, it colors a lot of what he says in a new light. Many of what seem like simple, self-righteous statements reveal themselves to be Aziraphale trying to protecting himself from a massive logical inconsistency he keeps stumbling across. 

"It must be bad, otherwise you wouldn't have tempted them into it," Aziraphale says, clearly not quite sure why it's bad actually. 

"You, I'm afraid, are evil," Aziraphale asserts, basically stating that Crowley is evil because he's evil. It's tauntological and therefore doesn't have to make sense. (He says this one shortly before Crowley saves Elsbeth from suicide, poverty and damnation.) 

"So this is all your demonic work? I should have known," Aziraphale says, thinking, "Aha, this time Crowley must have done the bad thing and therefore continues to deserve being Fallen." (Crowley has, in fact, not done the bad thing but shhhh, worry about that later.) 

Once you notice this self defensive habit, you can't unnotice it really, it's just so present in Aziraphale's logic and speech. Aziraphale even at one point says, "Still a demon, then?" after the Ark and Job and Jesus because on some level he probably doesn't want to actually evaluate, it makes no sense to him that Crowley is still a Demon, especially when he has also sinned in a few ways (lied to Gabriel, thwarted the will of God, technically gluttony etc) and nothing has happened to him, to say nothing for all the things Gabriel has done (or has just let passively happen without a thought to interfere).

So yes, I think the entire final argument plays out the way it does because Aziraphale thinks Crowley is good and deserves to be reinstated, to be forgiven by God more than anything. 

He comes into their final conversation nervous but excited, to the point where he stomps right over what Crowley is trying to say. "You see I... I have some incredible good news to give you." The good news is for Crowley, you see, because Crowley deserves this and clearly being forgiven like he so deserves should logically make Crowley happy. It will make Aziraphale happy after all. 

Aziraphale then starts to describe the conversation that he had with Metatron, stating that he thinks he might have misjudged him. And why would he think that he misjudged the angel who had told him point blank to his face that "The point is not to avoid the war, it is to win it" about the Apocalypse? Well, it's not because he's offered the job of Supreme Archangel, that's for sure. As we can see in the flashback, Aziraphale seems nervous and uninterested in the job at first. He says clearly that he doesn't want to go back to Heaven and even brings up a very half assed excuse to try and weasel out of it, a soft no of, "Where will I get my coffee?" 

No, instead, the clear, obvious point where Aziraphale changes his mind about the job and about the Metatron is when he offers to reinstate Crowley as an Angel. Metatron has, quite accidentally (I think? I don't think he actually knows Aziraphale's secret soul), just said one of the most faith affirming things he possibly could to Aziraphale, "We can correct that little error that's been bothering you. You are completely correct that Crowley deserves God's forgiveness." 

Given that, it's understandable that Aziraphale is absolutely bubbly about Crowley's reinstatement when he mentions it to him, like the best thing ever has just happened to him even though he's talking about something that will happen to Crowley and not him at all. "You could come back to heaven and- and everything. Like the old times, only even nicer." (Nicer because this time, they are in love. Nicer because they'll both be powerful enough to make a difference.)

Some other bits of Aziraphale's dialogue from this scene that make so much sense through this lens are:

After Crowley tries to reiterate his constant stance that both sides are bad actually, and mentions how he rejected Hell's offer to work with them again, Aziraphale misses his point completely and says, "But well, obviously you said no to Hell, you're the bad guys. But Heaven, it's the side of truth, of light, of good." Aziraphale's faith in the potential goodness of Heaven and the actual goodness of God is unflappable but so is his belief that good is what Crowley wants to be doing. Like of course a good soul like Crowley would reject working for Hell again but why would he reject a chance to do good like he's sneakily been doing all along? (Aziraphale here ignores the fact that he's also had to sneakily do good on the side sometimes even though he was always working for "the side of good" but that is very par for the course for him sadly.) 

The lines, "Come with me- to heaven. I'll run it, you can be my second in command. We can make a difference," are a particularly telling set.  Everything about these from the high position he's offering Crowley to the "We" scream that Aziraphale trusts Crowley, a Demon, to guide Heaven the correct way more than any angel already in Heaven.

Aziraphale's final, desperate argument also lines up well with this (as well as featuring Aziraphale more completely referencing how he wants him and Crowley to be together romantically). "Come back, to heaven. Work with me! We can be together. Angels... Doing good. I- I need you! I don't think you understand what I'm offering you." Like is the "I need you" here romantic? Definitely. But it's also Aziraphale again affirming that he trusts Crowley to lead him the correct way ie goodness, because, as it's been shown to us many times (and focused on particularly in this season), Crowley will do and always has been doing the correct thing as best he could while Aziraphale would dither and be locked into passivity (like in The Resurrectionists).

So yes, after many attempts to explain to Crowley how he should be in Heaven, doing good and Aziraphale needs his help and one last desperate kiss from Crowley, we reach the final dreaded, "l forgive you." And yes, maybe Aziraphale is forgiving Crowley for not having faith that they can fix heaven, for abandoning him, for kissing him so suddenly. But I hope, after everything I've laid out here in this essay, you can also see why I think Aziraphale is saying, "Even as you reject God's forgiveness and leave me behind, I still see that you are good and know you deserve it so I will forgive you anyway." And maybe, even though it's still blasphemous to disagree with God, it's less scary for Aziraphale to say "I forgive you" one more time than tell Crowley that he loves him for the first time. He is very good at forgiveness after all.

[jesncin]

Finally finished Young Justice S2

it was pretty good! Definitely a huge improvement from the first season even if there's a ton of plot holes and problems still, but it's clear that this season really amped the stakes in an interesting way. They took bigger swings, and sometimes that results in bigger misses. Lingering thoughts:

absolutely ludicrous of Nightwing and the other team members who were in on the "Kaldur is being a double agent" plot, to not let M'gann in on that 😭what do you MEAN you're not letting the telepath who has been mind breaking villains casually in on your Kaldur under cover plot? Ridiculous, biggest plot hole ever.

What exactly is the team's stance on M'gann mind breaking bad guys? Obviously Conner hates it, but I remember Bumblebee telling M'gann to "Brain blast him or something" so? Does the team know M'gann does this and are okay with it? Does Conner tell anyone what M'gann did to him? Aayee

lol @ M'gann saying she can only shapeshift into girls/women when she casually turns into men multiple times this season. But even when that concept was introduced they contradicted themselves in that very episode.

There's something,,, uncomfortable about the whole Arsenal plot where he ends up getting kicked out of the team. My memory's a bit foggy since I watched the episodes in chunks but- I thought Nightwing cutting Arsenal off the team was uncalled for? Like sure Arsenal panicked and got everyone captured because of it, but then he essentially single handedly (hah) saved everyone again, leading a rag tag new team to help him save his friends. Sure it was his fault that they got captured in the first place (because he was traumatized from fear of being captured again) but well. If he isn't psychologically fit to be back on the team so soon after being traumatically trapped for so long,,,why is he on the team to begin with? It gets into this uncomfy convo where the Young Justice team just kinda normalizes child soldiers to hop right back into intense crime fighting before they had a chance to recover mentally. Like he more than made up for his mistake in my opinion.

Way too many characters again! Especially by the end of the season. They really should've just focused on the cast surrounding Blue Beetle, Impulse, and Arsenal as new characters because their plots were the center of the conflict really! The Batfam members didn't have a personality and felt superfluous to the cast.

The rag tag team of meta kids were done dirty by the end! Static just joins Young Justice at the ending in a way that felt mandatory instead of natural.

I can't believe they just shipped a bunch of characters at the end again like last season lol I was caught off guard by that completely.

Waaay too much exposition, most of which felt unnatural. I know this season's plot is way more ambitious, but there could've been better ways to give us that information. Many of the episodes were just "plot is progressing" and not giving characters a chance to grow through their arcs.

Overall, I had a good time even when I was frustrated at certain plots. This is definitely not the Young Justice slump era I know is coming eventually, lol.

[ca-suffit]

This antiblack campaign the fandom just tried to kick up again (to avoid talking about the real issue with Nalyra) reveals how powerless they're starting to truly feel now.

They don't have many users left to vilify so they're putting people on blocklists who are brand new (I was here 3 days lol) or not even really in the fandom. That looks goofy and desperate but then it keeps going. DMing strangers to say "the truth" isn't about racism and "talk to me if you really want to know about anything." Everyone's reblogging those blocklist posts now and adding large commentary suddenly, when before they often fully sat it out. They're doing this in a group to look like they have larger numbers and are "revealing" there's a "big secret bullying problem"....except nobody believes them. Because there's plenty of accounts who are out here saying this shit straight to their faces and they pretend we all don't exist. All of this group has to manufacture drama solely because they just don't want to talk about harmful shit they actually do.

Neil has to make an antiblack statement she made suddenly be about antisemitism towards her, Nalyra's antiblackness is "actually" fans upset about shipping and "what's REALLY coming" in S2, showmey0urfangs is always happy to show up with her dumb screencaps and villain monologue nobody asked for so she can make her everlasting outrage about popular black fics and "feminized" Louis sound deeper than it is, Virginia suddenly cries about IRL issues and wants to leave the fandom because she wants to distract from the Nalyra receipts, Keybearer accused another black fan of trolling people and getting accounts suspended on twitter in 2023 when a Marius fan eventually confessed to it and his eternal shame for that means now every black fan except him is a bully (despite nobody talking about this ever anymore except him), chicalepidopterare mocks a black fan for blocking her "because I thought we were supposed to talk about racism" and then poorly tries to frame any retaliation against her to look like bullying ("see, they're misogynistic, they're bullying my art, they're mean for disliking these ships!").

To quote Claudia here, "You must think me an idiot." And the big cherry on top is also how none of these losers can stand to hear any mention of race....in the fandom of the show that nonstop talks about race. They're using very basic (and meant in a gentle, loving way) teasing of Jacob as proof that black fans are racist against Jacob too, black fans hate Jacob's white wife. People hate Lestat for being white too (what?). They can write crap meta all day about Lestat letting Louis "rape" him and only white victims (Lestat) being real victims to the evil black and brown "true" manipulators (Claudia, Louis, Armand) but gentle teasing from black fans about Jacob's haircut is the real racism. Okay lol. Care to tell us again why you think Delainey's Claudia looks "less innocent" now then? This 3D chess you think you're playing isn't playing how you think for anyone else.

I also notice that afaik there's not a single black American in this group. Idek if there's many Americans of any kind in the group. It's been a lot of shaming to black Americans specifically though, again from the show that's focused on black Americans....by people who aren't black Americans.

"There's people pretending to be black so it's okay to keep hating this whole group." It's not enough you already nonstop shit on black fans as it is, now you have to try to angle it as if none of this could be authentic in the first place. Vile behavior. For what? Tumblr isn't even a platform that pays you for whatever clout you have, so really what is the point here. In a small ass fandom on top of it. Some of you have pretty grown kids too, this is extra sad. It makes all the jumping through hoops to coddle Lestat's behavior make sense though, if you're the same kind of person yourself. Anyway, maybe you don't actually know everything because race exists in the real world beyond how Anne Rice wrote about it in her useless books! You make books written by a racist white woman your whole personality and guess what your outlook on life is going to be.

It's been really pathetic to especially watch any fans of color move more to this extreme bullying side as time has gone on. It will never pay off to promote white fandom ideals. These accounts you're trying to cuddle up to aren't even that big. The fandom outside of the tags actually has much more popular posts, supporters, and fics...although that's also half of what this all is actually about, fic numbers. Again, these are grown adults obsessing over this. We could have a whole different fandom if this group didn't exist and keep wanting to gatekeep everything and be the only people who get praise about anything.

It's no surprise that people who worship Anne Rice have major ego problems themselves. It's been fucked up to deal with but the good thing now is that big egos have big collapses eventually and that's what we're starting to see happening now. People are sick of you and able to see through your basic ass manipulation techniques. People just want to have a fandom, they're not here to worship fans who want to be dictators. Nobody is here for your fragility, losers.

[roobylavender]

hmm this may interest you, do you have thoughts on this subject matter character-wise or in a meta sense?:

https://www.tumblr.com/thecruellestmonth/740875315694501888/batman-turning-points-3-batman-under-the-red

personally i'm not a fan of bruce's disavowal of fatherhood much for the same reasons that i'm not a fan of his installing the good soldier plaque. these to me are both writing choices driven more by writers' desire to explore theoretical concepts than they are driven by a character study of bruce himself. the concept of robin as an occupation inherently equivalent to child abuse is interesting. the concept of wondering what right a father has to children he has adopted towards that end is interesting. that being said, exploring the former concept didn't necessarily demand eliminating robin altogether. exploring the latter concept didn't necessarily demand bruce completely disavowing himself of any accountability. and ultimately both writing choices ignore that a core aspect of bruce's relationships with the robins was wanting to be a good parent, or at the least a good guardian. certainly something more than a mere ally or friend. he took responsibility for these children because he wanted to help guide them towards a certain path in life where they would no longer be ruled by their trauma the way he was and is by his. allowing them to become robin to that end was obv more than questionable, but all too many writers forget and even go so far as to ignore that bruce knew that. he was well aware of his status as an enabler and he eventually hated himself for it deeply. he felt perpetually guilty and reluctant to ask dick for any support once the latter became an adult bc he didn't want to sanction and (in his mind) effectively require dick to do something that would endanger his life on his own orders. he could realistically never stop dick from pursuing vigilantism, but he could at least refuse to ask dick for that commitment any longer so that dick had complete freedom to make his own choices as to the matter. regardless, bruce had to live with the guilt of having enabled the existence of robin to begin with, and he intended to live with that guilt. it was his closest friend and his primary means of survival

if anything, that to me is precisely why his disavowal of fatherhood doesn't make sense. bruce is a poor communicator and he has a tendency to take upon all burdens at the expense of his loved ones feeling like he no longer values them or their support, but that doesn't negate the fact that he's quite hyperaware of his flaws. he's a far more relentless critic of himself than he is of others, and that stems as much from self-righteousness as it does guilt. he's supposed to be better. he's supposed to set an example. he's supposed to do the right thing. he's supposed to save the whole city even if he's only one person. and so on and so forth. bruce is possessive of highly unrealistic expectations for himself bc he's a ridiculously emotional person trying to tell himself to act like a robot. he repeatedly sets himself up for failure and then when he inevitably fails he kicks himself down like a dog. he is essentially a walking man-child simply because he cares too much and that often leads him to make stupid, emotionally driven choices: like taking random children into his home and teaching them how to channel their emotions through fighting crime, because if it worked for him it might work for them too, esp when they've got the added benefit of his supervision and well-intended (albeit awkward) companionship

all of bruce's circumstances and internalizations and traumas point to him taking what i would term excessive ownership of his crimes. he's a self-made pity puddle because he thinks everything is his fault. dick barely having a life outside of vigilantism is his fault. dick nearly falling to his death is his fault. jason failing to properly process his parental trauma is his fault. jason getting blown up by the joker is his fault. i simply cannot imagine a world where bruce isolates himself from caring or from taking the blame because doing the latter has been his modus operandi for so long. it makes more sense for bruce to disavow fatherhood in the specific context of not wanting to take the place that john and mary or willis and catherine will always occupy; it makes less sense for bruce to disavow fatherhood in the specific context of raising and loving dick and jason as if they were his own. it's very much a you don't have to call me dad but when i call you "chum" i mean "son" situation. he's never one to burden others intentionally (although we obv know this rarely plays out the way he wants it to), rather he intentionally burdens himself. that's precisely what knightfall as an arc is stellar at depicting, regardless of the fact that it coincides with the existence of the good soldier plaque. bruce in the aftermath of jason's death has to blame himself excessively because it's the only way he knows how to cope. i've never understood depictions of his grief with an emphasis on jason's share of the blame bc not only is it classist towards jason, it's also inconsistent with bruce's own character and tendency to believe that every bad thing that happens is his fault. it's why i'm not really a fan of gotham knights #43-45. a death in the family makes it clear that bruce blames himself for not allowing jason to have the space and time to process his trauma properly before throwing him into the suit. allowing him to have hope never even comes into the picture

and i'm not sure if anyone has ever considered this, but the disavowal of fatherhood really confuses me when you remember tim exists. why is bruce's disavowal with regards to jason even necessary when the crux of tim's entry into the mythos is precisely the fact that he isn't someone over whom bruce can similarly exercise responsibility and ownership.. it's far more interesting to explore the tightrope bruce walks with that partnership because he's easily in a place to deny responsibility and yet obv he ultimately can't because despite whatever reluctance he expressed initially, he eventually gave in. the tone of the grant/brefoygle run also helps with depicting that dilemma. we're not primarily privy to the bruce of old anymore, who while quiet and awkward nonetheless expressed a capacity for caretaking. there are remnants of that of course (esp after tim's mother dies). but the bruce of the 90s is more imperious and domineering because he's been hardened by trauma. he delivers grand speeches about vigilantism and justice. he sends tim across the pond because he needs proper training. the fact that they're neighbors and get burgers together sometimes doesn't detract from the physical divide present there because tim is ultimately someone else's son and possessive of a life entirely divorced of what he does in the mask. he can walk away without preamble in a way that dick (at least until adulthood) and jason never could. plenty of writers recognized that and personally i believe it's what made the 90s robin run interesting to read, but i also believe writers retroactively projected the necessity of an emotionally distant bruce to that narrative onto the bruce of old. it was progressively rewritten to be a constant rather than a development in the wake of a highly transgressive event. and unfortunately that's tainted every interaction and/or recollection that he has with/of jason afterward

[conflictofthemind]

Your recent post about electromagnetism was great, but I want to know your theories on how time travel will play into the plot of season 5. I hope they won't use time travel to "fix the past" and rewrite the timeline (although I doubt that will happen).

Oh man I have so many thoughts. This is a whole can of worms to open up (which I will be doing eventually). But yes I agree with you 100%, I don’t think it will end in them rewriting the timeline. Or if they do, it will be through a creation of a new one and all of the characters will still be able to retain their previous memories. There still needs to be lasting consequences for every action, and the impacts of each characters’ decisions plus the entire story should stay with them.

Right now the main pet project that I’ve been working on gradually is something I’ve been calling the “play theory” (kind of a shit title); basically that Melvin is what’s dooming the narrative and causing the main characters to be trapped inside of a time loop. I’ll explain it condensed here but the post I have cooking is already 6 pages at least.

It first came from that whole Melvin “star-crossed lovers” “Romeo and Juliet” thing, and lines within the TFS play that is… also inspired itself by another “star-crossed doomed” lovers play. There are so many weird meta layers to it all.

There’s multiple 4th wall breaks in TFS where Henry tries to escape the theatre and seems to be aware he is performing on a stage. There’s also a very pointed dialogue which is where I finally started making this into a fully fledged theory:

“It’s a sad song, I like the gay ones best”.

“It doesn’t have to be sad, you never know the ending until it’s sung all the way through”.

“Then let’s make it a gay one”.

“Sing your own ending”.

And what a weird theme to choose, because the answer “in the play” is actually no, it can’t. TFS is a sad song, a continuation of the time loop. A play. But that surely won’t be the case for Stranger Things, because we’ve been told that Will’s superpower is his heart and he gets a happy ending.

As Mike performs his “love” for the audience, the name Montague (for Romeo Montague) appears behind him.

Basically, the characters are conforming to the pre-written roles they have already been assigned to (by society) and are forced to enact, and re-enact, a tragedy of two doomed lovers. The curtain on a play closes but the next night the story begins all over again, to a new audience, always with the same ending. Like a time loop. Like a never ending story.

Mike’s decision to keep playing the role of Romeo to El’s Juliet will result in Will beginning the time loop. So Will starts the time loop, and I expect Mike will be the one to finally break them out of it.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Friday Ramblings

I don't normally do this but I have a couple of thoughts going on in my head regarding the last couple of days week in BL that I just wanted to collect them all instead of just doing it in tags.

Shadow

I'm pissed. I am a big fan of anything horror or supernatural themed stuff so I was really looking forward to this. (Don't even get me started of how disappointed I am at the disappearance of the other horror themed show I could be watching) And the first part did not disappoint. It was a strong first half, good set up of the different story lines and all the players and I was really excited about it. There was such good meta written about the show, and it turned out to be superior to what the show eventually gave us. (@wen-kexing-apologist specially gave us such excellent meta on this show that I wish they were in charge of the second half of this show) I agree with @lurkingshan about everything they said here. Something which I thought was interesting was that I think in this second half the show purposefully made the fake arm really obvious. I don't know if it wanted us to know before Dan but I also don't think it was an accident. But I'm also not gonna theorize about the reasons because I really don't care that much. The "BL" bait was just another thing that pissed me off. I'm not upset it's not BL, I'm upset because it was sold as such and no one will convince me otherwise. For a couple of episodes, at least, the show wanted us to think that Dan was falling for Nai. The prom moment was just fucking ridiculous. The parallels with October 6 could've been really interesting if there wasn't so much going on that it kinda took the weight of it away. One of the questions I like to ask myself when watching any media is - what is it trying to tell? Sometimes nothing and that's fine. It's pure escapism and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It can still be excellent. And sometimes it tries to say too much that it ends up not having a cohesive message and it all falls flat. Religion, communism, family trauma, homophobia, mental health, infidelity, teacher-student relationship, pregnancy, murder, police brutality, friendship, bullying, the oh so many supernatural elements, I could go on. You get the picture. So in conclusion, I am not happy.

VIP Only

It's cute. I like both of them enough and it's a good mellow way to start the friday madness.

Last Twilight

This show is surprising me so much. In the best ways. As I said before this pair didn't do much for me in the past but I've surrendered completely, specially to Jimmy. He was so good in this episode that I felt obligated to gif it just so I could keep watching his expressions.

That whole final scene just floored me. His eyes just carried that moment and that whole scene so well that by the end a lonely sunflower brought tears to my eyes. ( and I do not cry easy). After all the cute dates, this scene was a gut punch.

I'm just really stuck on this show, and it holds my attention all through the episode.

My Dear Gangster Oppa

This episode was silly, I couldn't care less about the gangster side of the story at the moment, I'd rather spend more time with the gamer friend group. Wahl got a bit of a redemption but I still don't like him. I liked that Guy stood his ground with Wahl and Tew, but hated the stalker behaviour. If you wanna go dude, just leave!

Sahara Sensei to Toki-kun

Japan my beloved. They just keep giving me all I need. Toki is giving me some Aoki vibes and I could not be happier. And Toki now has got two friends in his corner and I'm so happy. This one and Kinou Nani Tabeta are currently my main sources of joy and my heart is full.

Pit Babe I'd like to thank @pharawee for giving us the novel commentary because it makes it a bit less confusing while I watch this. I have no clue about omegaverse so a part of me is confused, sometimes bored, another part of me is just waiting for Jeff and Alan to be a thing and all of me is happy that Pavel is on my screen weekly.

Twins

This show is dragging and I'm officially bored. I don't mind a slow burn if the rest of the show can hold it together. But the team animosity is just tiring and annoying at this point, the side couples are not engaging ( a bj in the shower does not a side couple make) and for a show named Twins, I would like to see more of them.

Middleman's Love

I'm 99% here for the sides. They are cute, they give me some Ram/King vibes and I wanna see more of them. I was super happy to see Ngern again and the family dinner was a good moment. I don't have the patience for this sort of misunderstanding anymore so that ending annoyed the hell out of me.

(I'm watching For Him too but I have nothing nice to say, so I'll say nothing at all. And yes I know I just did that with Shadow but I was never that invested in this one)

Really looking forward to Kinou Nani Tabeta tomorrow morning and The Sign in the afternoon.

I wish all a great weekend and thanks for reading💜

(because I needed a good cry)

[bookinit02]

TikTok is back (it’s not good anymore) and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the whole situation. It’s clear that it has been bought out and something much more sinister is going on.

well yeah, i’m not surprised at all. i did say in my original post that i fully believed tiktok would be brought back and wouldn’t be the same afterwards. i’m not sure if i believe that it’s already gone downhill in the last day—my fyp looks the exact same, so i think there may be a bit of conspiracy surrounding that. HOWEVER. i have fully believed for a long while that tiktok will eventually be sold out to american companies and information will start being suppressed. i’ve believed this since the first congress hearings a few years ago—and in fact, i do believe that tiktok began to change after those hearings. the algorithm changed to become more of an echo chamber, ads became more prominent, censorship ramped up, etc. for anyone with pattern recognition that’s been paying attention to the state of social media/the internet in general the last few years, i don’t think this is surprising in the slightest. this slow decline due to capitalizing online spaces has happened to youtube, instagram, etc.—apps that began as valuable community spaces and became overran with ads and hate speech. even tumblr, to some degree.

specifically going back to tiktok, i think it’s very clear that trump is trying (poorly) to orchestrate a move where he looks like the hero of free speech and make himself popular with young people at the same time. i say poorly, but it does still concern me, because apparently #thankyoutrump was trending on twitter today (though twitter is a cesspool anyway). i can only hope that anyone who already opposed trump wouldn’t be swayed by a move this flimsy. facebook has created their own tiktok page, so i think meta will be co-owning tiktok to some degree going forward, which will no doubt lead to a sharp decline in the app’s functionality and usability. i’m going to continue using it for now, but i do think we’ll have to move to a different platform going forward—likely not rednote, because i very strongly suspect that will be banned or bought out as well. a new app will pop up, and the cycle will start over again, like it always does, until something breaks or changes.

really, i am not the most apt political commentator—i just go by what i see and hear, and there are many more knowledgeable people than me. still, this is incredibly predictable and unsurprising. the only thing i’m really surprised by is that the ban didn’t even last a full day. but yeah, essentially, we’re going to have to move somewhere else eventually, or just use the app as best we can. keep the faith, stay hopeful🫡

[vidavalor]

I know we're all keeping you from posting the major sexy metas by inundating you with questions but the stuff you post is just SO INTRIGUING lol. Sooo, you think they use toys too, then? ;-) Gosh, I think they are further ahead than most of us! We can probably learn a thing or two from them. Do you think they may have inspired the Kama Sutra? On that note, I wonder what your thoughts are on spirituality/divine love and sex, or sex magick, and what of that you see reflected in Good Omens perhaps?

hi @procrastiel how are you, my darling? Ask and ye shall eventually receive (sorry for the delay). Really fun questions-- thank you! :)

The sex toy reference in GO: Lockdown and some thoughts on Crowley and Aziraphale, mindfulness, and Tantric Eye Gazing under the cut.

<<further ahead than most of us>> They have a few thousand years head start so one would hope.

<<you think they use toys too, then? ;-)>>

Do with this excerpt from the forthcoming Cake meta on GO: Lockdown what you will:

The Bundt cake exploded in popularity in Buddy Holly's America of the 1950s when the Nordicware company developed the Bundt pan with its distinctive shape. To date, Bundt cake is really the only type of cake named after the pan-- one might even say, the device-- used to bake the cake, rather than after the kind of cake itself. While you can bake many kinds of cake in a Bundt cake pan, the traditional choice is... pound cake.

<<inspired The Kama Sutra?>>

I don't think they inspired it since they at least tried to be a secret for some time but there are some things tied to it that seem relevant a bit maybe? The most direct thing to tantra that I noticed is maybe an allusion to Tantric Eye Gazing (sometimes also called "Soul Gazing").

This one is fun because there's actually some science behind it as well. It's been proven that staring into a trusted partner's eyes for about 40 to 60 seconds causes your body to start to generate the hormone oxytocin, the bonding chemical that some people call "the love hormone." Look into someone's eyes a little longer-- a couple of minutes or more-- and your body starts to flood with oxytocin.

The effects include decreased cortisol (stress hormone) production-- so less anxiety-- and an increased sense of calm/peace, etc., but it also causes a deeper connection between partners. You can theoretically do it anywhere you both feel safe and comfortable enough to be a bit vulnerable and where you are probably not going to be interrupted-- so, the bookshop, for them. If you practice Tantric Eye Gazing in bed, the love hormone flood deepens intimacy between partners and contributes to a more pleasurable experience. The preoccupation with Crowley's eyes and his whole serpent gaze is potentially a nod to something like this as well.

Aziraphale is, as we know, obsessed with Crowley's eyes. He painted half the shop their color. He lives for kinky lunch and being gazed at... he even got The Bentley to take off its sunglasses lol. Meanwhile, Crowley's favorite song is that besotted pinefest "Pale Blue Eyes" so it's not like it's a one-sided thing. They could have kind of fallen into aspects of Eye Gazing without knowing it is a thing, honestly, but I'd wager since they've been around forever, they know what it is. Plus, well, there's also crepes, which winds up defined around it fundamentally being about eventually coming back to a position that makes it easier to kiss and emphasizes eye contact, which is a way of emphasizing a focus on intimacy.

You could also, if you want to, take Aziraphale's "you like waiting inside" comment below a bit in this direction as well, because the idea with Tantric Eye Gazing in bed is that it is meant to bring about a sense of a kind of hyper-awareness of the present and to feel grounding-- not at all things these two like or need lol-- but, just as you can try this outside of bed and it's a different experience, it is also different in bed, depending on when and how you and your partner try it. One way is just while inside your partner but before actively moving much. "You like waiting inside" is already "you like just hanging out inside me and taking your time and driving us both insane" so it's not really far off to throw the eye thing in there as well.

Aziraphale does mean on one level that Crowley just likes being in the actual bookshop, yeah, but Aziraphale also both used the bookshop as euphemistic for his body earlier in the season and says the comment in the Marguerite's scene with a suggestive tone, so it's not out there to go there with it, imo. There are other things it suggests as well, really, but none that I can see that directly conflict with the idea of it being also related to Eye Gazing.

Tantric Eye Gazing is basically a mindfulness exercise as well and they are both overtly into trying to combat the blahs of life with mindfulness in scenes we've already seen-- the way they both breathe in the magic shop in the present in S2 and Aziraphale with the sushi in 1.01, for a couple of examples. This isn't just a way of coping with anxiety and depression; they are examples of sensual living. They both are already highly sensitive but add in the openness to experiencing things like food and music on a deeper level and it's not hard to reach the conclusion that they treat sex the same way, if not even more so.

The sushi scene is also an example of tying that sense of mindfulness to sex directly. I mean, Aziraphale taking that peaceful, centering breath and breathing in the brine there and hearing the miracle chime and assuming it was Crowley apparating in beside him so he wasn't expecting to silently ADHLKDJEKJKFLE GABRIEL! when he opened his eyes and looked towards where he thought Crowley would be...

...and that look? Yeah, they've tried and like and frequently do the eye thing lol.

The actual Kama Sutra itself? When I read your question, the gif below was what I pictured-- just Crowley tossing the whole book up and them picking pages out of the air and the running commentary...

"Absolutely not." "Hm, maybe that one." "You're bendy enough for this one." "Was this one not legally torture in several kingdoms at one point?" "That can't be comfortable." "We're magical and I think that would kill us..." lol

They probably tried what of it looked fun, as they seem willing to give anything that interests them a whirl.

<<sex magick in GO>>

I've made a note to put together some more coherent thoughts and do a separate thing on this at some point. It's a very creative question & I'd like to devote some more thought to it first. Thanks for the ask. :)