#i'm pretty sure i've done this one with faith before...

[lenaellsi]

on aziraphale's insecurities in S2

i'm pretty sure one of the lines in the end scene where crowley shoots himself in the foot the most is "i think i understand a whole lot better than you do," and i don't even think he realizes how badly aziraphale takes it.

it's just a fact to him: he knows better than aziraphale what heaven is like. it's also a fact to the audience, who knows that the metatron is doing this for bad reasons and that aziraphale is walking into a trap. but it's not a fact to aziraphale. and that's the moment aziraphale goes from panicky and anxious to angry.

aziraphale's self-doubts and anxieties concerning his identity as an angel are shown frequently in s2. we start 2x01 with him deeply insecure in his 'retirement': crowley mentions that aziraphale frequently calls him to "tell him about something clever he did," and aziraphale confirms that he is essentially using these conversations as a stand-in for reporting to heaven. he misses being on The Good Team and doesn't know what to do with himself now that he's not.

so aziraphale doesn't know who he is if he's not an angel, but he also knows that he's a bad angel. he was frequently mocked and condescended to in heaven (by seemingly everyone, not just the archangels; even the quartermaster in s1 called him pathetic). he lied to heaven, he lied to god, he enjoys earthly pleasures, he loves works with a demon, and he doubts the Plan. he never fit in with them. lonely, remember?

and later in the season, we learn that shax, for all that she apparently is not great with sarcasm, is remarkably perceptive when picking up on insecurities. she mocks aziraphale twice, first in the car for his relationship with crowley (which, interestingly, doesn't faze him a bit--remember the eyebrow? he's not at all insecure in his knowledge that crowley loves him. crowley has always been the thing he's most sure of, even very early on--look at how much faith he has in him with job.) the second time she hits much harder: "crowley's emotional support angel," "shall we send in the sushi?" "the softest touch" etc. it hurts him, you can see it.

and there's another tiny moment in 2x05 I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about, where crowley has just bluffed to the demon horde and is trying to get all the humans together to leave. crowley says, "I won't leave you on your own," and aziraphale says, "I know. But I have a suggestion--" and crowley brushes him off, saying "I got this." aziraphale looks very frustrated by this exchange, which--yeah! fair!

and over and over, we just--we see crowley be right. right about job and god, right about elspeth, right about the magic trick, the nazis, the arrangement, the apocalypse. "you were right, you were right, i was wrong, you were right." crowley's never done the dance before, he says. how many times has aziraphale had to?

and crowley's not just right, he's confident in it! he moves through the world and makes choices that fly in the face of everything aziraphale knows about Good and Evil, and it seems to come so easily to him. he's loud, and he's brave, and he's full of conviction, and aziraphale often feels overshadowed by that surety, because he's so often full of doubt. "you sound jealous, angel," is what crowley says at job's mansion, and i think he's more right than he knows.

all this to say: when crowley says "I think I understand a whole lot better than you do," what aziraphale hears is you idiot and how can somebody as clever as you be so stupid and I was right, I was right, you were wrong, I was right. and he's fucking sick of it.

and so he doubles down, and he gets in the stupid elevator, and he makes the worst mistake of his life, because he's sick of being treated as heaven's lackey or crowley's sidekick. the metatron knew exactly what to say to get him there, and crowley had no idea he was playing directly into it.

[w2soneshots]

Blind date -W2S

words: 0.8k+

warnings: talk of past relationship and break up.

summary: Faith sets you and Harry up on a blind date, little did she know you already dated him years prior.

notes: hi my loves, I hope you’re having a lovely day/night. I apologise for the lack of posting recently, I’ve been so busy! But I absolutely love this idea. Enjoy!!🤗💘

Today I'm going on a blind date. I've never done anything like this before but it's been set up by one of my new friends Faith, who I trust not to pick a dickhead. I'm meeting him at an Italian restaurant that's just a ten minute walk from my apartment. I'm nervous but also quite excited.

I spent extra time getting ready and picking a cute outfit. Once I was finished I began the walk to the restaurant. I took a deep breath before walking inside. I'd arrived a little bit late so I assumed he'd already be there.

I looked around for a moment before my eyes landed on Harry, the boy I dated two years ago. It only lasted a few weeks and we were never actually official. We just wanted different things at the time so both decided to go our separate ways.

"Oh my fucking god." I muttered quietly to myself. I turned around, quickly pulling out my phone. "Surely this is just a coincidence?" I thought. I texted Faith to be sure. "Did you set me up with Harry Lewis?!" I asked, trying to remain calm. She replied quickly. "Yeah, he's Ethan's friend. Do you recognise him?" "We dated two years ago Faith! What do I do?" "Omg! Was it toxic?" "No, we just wanted different things." "Go talk to him then! Maybe this is meant to be." I recollected myself, maybe it is meant to be.

As I walked towards him I thought about how on earth I didn't know that Faith's boyfriend Ethan was also Harry's friend Ethan, who I hadn't actually met when we were together since we weren't that serious.

I knew Harry did youtube and Faith had told me that her boyfriend's name was Ethan but I obviously never connected the dots. I have also only known Faith for a few months and we met through a mutual friend so we haven't really discussed our personal lives properly.

Harry looked up and his eyes connected with mine. A look of pure shock and surprise spread across his face. He stood up, stumbling slightly. "Uh- I- y/n?" He stuttered. I chuckled nervously. "Hey, long time no see." His hand reached up to scratch the back of his neck. "Yeah... are you my date?" "I guess so. I'm friends with Faith."

He sat down and I sat opposite him. An awkward silence fell over us. "So- uh- how've you been?" He asked. "Pretty good. I officially live in London now." One of the reasons our relationship didn't work was that I lived to far away but last year I moved into my current apartment to be closer to work. "Oh, you do?" "Mhm, my apartments just ten minutes from here." I replied, fiddling with my hands under the table.

We ordered some drinks and the conversation started to flow. He told me about all of the major things that had happened in his life since I last saw him and we discussed his friendship with Ethan. When we were "together" we had pretty good chemistry, I was always laughing and smiling when I was around Harry and I was starting to feel the same things I felt two years ago as the date progressed.

While we ate our food we moved onto the topic of how on earth we ended up on a date together. "So Faith had no idea that you knew me before setting us up?" Harry asked before taking another bite of his pizza. "No, absolutely no clue." "That's... really strange." "I know, like out of all the people she could have chosen she picked you." "Did you ask her to set you up with someone?" He asked, head tilted slightly to the side. "Mhm. I asked if she knew anyone since the dating scene in London is really shit." He chuckled, "You're not wrong."

After eating our pizza we left the restaurant, just as the sun was setting. We stopped outside for a moment before I spoke. "Did you wanna come back to mine for a drink or something?" His eyes lit up slightly. "Yeah- yeah, I'd like that." I smiled. "Okay then, this way." I grabbed his hand absentmindedly.

"Uh- sorry." I apologised as soon as I realised what I'd just done. He smirked slightly. "Don't apologise." I looked up at him. His eyes flickered from my eyes to my lips. My breath caught in my throat and my heart rate sped up. "I haven't ever liked anyone as much as I like you." He admitted. "Like, as in present tense?" I questioned. He nodded slowly. "Having dinner with you today made me realise how much I missed you." My face softened. "I missed you too," I whispered.

"So would you be willing to give us another go? You know, now that you live in London?" He asked hopefully. I smiled. "I'd like that." He placed his hand on the back of my neck, slowly bringing me towards him until our lips were just millimetres apart. I pushed myself onto my tiptoes, closing the gap. We both fell into the kiss, my mind immediately taking me back to two years ago as I realised I'd never really gotten over Harry Lewis.

[strifetxt]

i get that wild life (and secret life before it) are very different from life series past in that the mechanics are very front and center, and i understand the frustration that causes when part of what tumblr fandom in particular really loves about the series is the social dynamics! i get it, i really do.

but i think at this point, unfortunately, they can't really just do a pure social game anymore in the same way? this group of creators knows each other very well at this point! they've learned the patterns, both of the game and of each other! the social game just isn't going to work as effectively for any of them! there's only so many ways they can do "normal semi-hardcore survival until we all start killing each other", at the end of the day.

that's the reason why they need the gimmicks to be more intrusive. yes, maybe they get in the way of the "typical" progression of a life series, with base building and alliance forming and such, but like. the ccs have done that all before, several times over. the gimmicks give them something different to interact with that isn't just each other, which makes it easier for them to make videos that are new and interesting to a wider audience.

and to the people saying that it gives them no time to build a narrative and form character arcs--isn't the fact that things are different now an interesting narrative in and of itself? isn't it interesting to see the ways in which these characters react when faced with each new bizarre situation? the way that several different crumbling relationships had to be put on pause this past session because everyone had to focus on a threat bigger than themselves?

ultimately, this new style of life series might not be your cup of tea, and that's completely okay. or maybe the snail gimmick felt too unfair; i definitely think grian maybe underestimated the impact that they'd have, which explains the much shorter session. i do personally hope that the next wild card is one that gives the players some more room to breathe, considering how many of them talked about how stressful this last one was. but like. i've seen multiple posts taking this whole thing in bad faith and saying that the gimmicks are proof that the life series is just becoming a soulless content mill and that it's clearly a sign of corporate greed, and like? i mean, putting aside the fact that this is their job, and they do have to make their videos get views to secure their livelihoods (which is hardly 1% bourgeois living, to be clear), at the end of the day, i'm pretty sure grian's just trying to strike a balance between making the series fun to watch, and making sure it stays fun for his friends to play.

[dream-with-a-fever]

but i’m a fire and i’ll keep your brittle heart warm (snippet)

by dream-with-a-fever (me) / societysgot (ao3)

harry/ginny, oneshot, canon compliant, missing moments during OotP

“So, I take it that cave in the mountains outside Hogsmeade wouldn’t work as a meeting place with Sirius?” She said, bringing them back to their conversation in the library.

Harry shook his head. “Definitely not — how did you know about that?”

“I’m really into mountain hiking,” She replied, without missing a beat.

Harry gave her a quizzical look before her face broke out into a smile, and she laughed.

“I’m joking - I've never done it,” She said, with a snort, “Hermione mentioned doing it with her family once — no, Sirius told me about it over the summer, back at Grimmauld place.”

“You and Sirius talked?”

For some reason he hadn’t even considered the fact that the Weasleys had been staying there for several weeks before Harry’s arrival. Jealousy bubbled in him momentarily, at the thought of them all spending their summer together, while he was stuck in privet drive. They had probably shared meals, swapped stories, made jokes. He vaguely remembered the youngest Weasley holding court up one end of the table on a particular evening, chatting animatedly with Remus, Tonks and Sirius. She had almost seemed like one of the crew. He just hadn't given it much thought until now.

She gave him a quizzical look, and he realised he must’ve been silent for a beat too long.

“Yeah, is that… alright with you?”

He forced out a laugh. “Yeah- erm, of course. I just didn’t think — I don’t know.”

“Well, he’s cool. Got a great muggle music collection. You’d probably know some of ‘em? There’s one band — super good called The Beatle and—”

“The Beatles.”

“What?”

Harry suppressed a smile. “Never mind.”

“They're really good. But, he mainly talks about you, you know,” She said, after a beat, “Raves about you actually.”

Harry sighed, like this was a real inconvenience.

"Oh, I am sorry," said Harry, fighting back a grin.

"I told him, I said Sirius, I haven't got all day - but the man's relentless. Wanted to know everything."

“That must’ve been terribly boring.”

“Very," She hummed, noncommittally. "You know, Harry Potter — famously boring.”

“Glad you agree.”

“Well, we can’t have everyone inflating your ego now, can we?”

Harry spluttered for a moment, before she continued.

“Not that a bit more arrogance on your part would be bad. You could be a lot worse. Look at Percy.”

“Thanks, Ginny.”

“Very welcome,” She said, breezily before clapping her hands together, “Anyway — if the cave isn’t an option, and all the fires are being guarded…”

“Well…not all of them,” Harry said, a look of realisation crossing his face.

When he looked up she was grinning widely at him, eyebrows raised. It was then that he looked around, and realised they were outside the Gryffindor common room — the trek from the library was like muscle memory to him now, and still their arrival had come as a shock to him.

The fat lady was chatting animatedly with her friend Violet from another portrait when they approached; both shrieking with laughter like a couple of hyenas, passing a bottle back and forth of some kind of mead that most certainly was not from the fat lady’s portrait. They were completely obvious to the two students stood outside.

“I’m sorry for interrupting your study session,” Ginny suddenly said, scrunching up her nose, looking rather guilty, “I know you need all the time you can get, you know, with the OWLs coming up so soon.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “Have a lot of faith in my academic ability then, do you?”

She choked out a laugh, whipping her auburn hair out of her eyes. “Not what I meant and you know it. Though if you hanging around Ron every minute of every day is any indication of your intelligence…”

“Pretty sure you spend more time with him than me,” Harry replied, looking aghast.

“Yeah — because he’s my brother - I'm stuck with him, aren't I? But you voluntarily spend every waking moment with him. I mean, think of all the brain cells you must have lost already…”

“See, that’s—”

“But there’s still time to save yourself from ruin, I reckon. Just gotta get back to the books.”

“Well, that’ll be hard, seeing as you got me banned from going back into the library ever again…”

She elbowed him hard in the side, and Harry looked up, surprised at the contact. But Ginny seemed unfazed - like this was nothing out of the ordinary.

“I think I’ll take that chocolate egg back then,” She demanded, flicking a curtain of red hair behind her.

Harry scoffed. “Pretty sure you already ate most of it—”

And that earned him his second jab in the ribs. He glanced down at his feet, suppressing a grin.

Their slight cofuffle had caught the attention of the fat lady who now, having finally noticed their presence, began to complain at their frankly insulting dawdling (‘I don’t have all day, you two!’)

They parted ways in the common room; Crookshanks trotting over to the youngest Weasley the second she had stepped through the door; Harry making his way up to the boys’ dormitories.

He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

(Unbeknownst to Harry, it was the best sleep he had had in weeks.)

[vidavalor]

I've had to disconnect from my dash because of all the negativity; I honestly do not get why people are acting like a semblance of justice+a movie is the worst thing in the world?

I'm mourning for the full six-episode season we lost because ng couldn't pass the utmost basic sub-zero bar for not acting like scum and of course I wish amazon had kicked him out and then sprung for it anyway (and honestly, as long as you're blaming the right person, I think it's fine to feel upset? We deserved better, the cast and crew deserved, Terry deserved better, and this one guy ruins it for everyone because the bar was buried six feet deep beneath the ground and he still managed to go lower, and that does suck, and it is miserable and unfair, so take a moment if you need it 🤷‍♀️) but let's face it, we got off lucky. Arguably, considering this was a standalone novel from the nineties, that then got made, in one of the best book adaptations I've ever seen, into a limited standalone tv miniseries (and, again, emphasising the standalone here, so even if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, we'll still always have S1 and the book; people have been ignoring the Jurassic Park sequels for nearly three decades), and then got a surprise sequel, we were pretty lucky the whole way through.

And regarding the whole what if it's bad thing, I was always going to be worried: I was anxious long before this shit went down, and I was anxious before S2 and even S1, as well. It's not like we ever had any guarantee it was going to be good beforehand either, and at this point, knowing what we do now, I'm not at all sure I'd have trusted ng to write this anyways. So while, yeah sure, I'm maybe a little more anxious now, I trust Michael and David with these characters and I trust Rob and Rhianna with Terry's legacy and story and that they wouldn't have fought so hard for this ending unless they planned to keep fighting and thought they could pull it off. Isn't the problem with this kind of thing normally that what happnes is the creator who cares deeply about the work gets pulled in favour of someone out-of-touch who cares not a jot about the story and needs to leave their own grubby fingerprints all over it? More the other way around here, no?

Anyway, what I also wanted to say was that I really appreciated your 'think of it as the final two episodes of season two' (and all your takes on this situation so far, very level-headed and optimistic, thank you). I mean, you're right, and it's hardly wildly out-there for a series to finish on a feature-length special, and although the filler material in S2 and the compression of S3 maybe means it doesn't exactly resemble what the second book would have been, it was only ever meant to be two books. (Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed S2 and was very glad to get it, even though I am a book/S1 fan and also had the most fun in that time fandom pre/post/around the time of the S1 release, but why does it exist? Ego? You can't tell me you couldn't have fit the important parts of S2 into one season with the S3 plotline.)

Basically, I'm grieving the could-have-beens (imagine if he'd been exposed way earlier and the TP estate had had control of this whole production from the very start!) and I'm a little worried that that hurt'll stick around no matter how good S3 is - which I need to fix, because that's more power over my favourite show and what it means to me that I want to give anyone, let alone someone like that - but at the end of day, I do think it definitely can be done with what we have, and I'm choosing to be hopeful it'll be done well, because, well, why wouldn't I?

(I will say this hasn't been great for my faith in humanity, because I really want to believe not all men are shit and some of them are making it very difficult right now, but that's an entirely different problem and so far believing most people are mostly good has always prevailed in the end so. y'know. we'll get there. might reread discworld, that's always good for that.)

Sorry for venting all this at you! I just kinda felt the need to write it all down once to get it off my chest... have a snack on me? I'm partial to cherry tomatoes, green melon and mandarines at the moment (I stop eating salads in winter, which means I default to eating even more fruit) but I can also offer homemade baked goodies fresh from this morning? 🥧

Hi there. 💕 You are welcome to vent away & thank you for the delicious-sounding snacks and kind words. I'm glad my posts on the movie boosted your spirits about it. I agree with and can relate to almost everything that you said here so assume that anything that I don't address just has a 'yes, absolutely' nod happening. 🙂‍↕️

The one thing I want to touch on here is S2 and this idea of it being "filler" that you mentioned that I think might not be quite accurate. I think you (and anyone else who reads this) might feel more enthused about the idea of a good ending in 90 minutes after reading this so hopefully this'll be another way that I can help?

On why S2 is really the whole story and actually had a lot more going on in every way than S1...

Ok, I'm going to explain something that drives writers like myself bonkers 😂 and that is how some readers or viewers of fictional stories mix up plot and story.

Nothing grinds our gears than reading things like "filler" and "unnecessary subplots" because, while everyone is within their rights to have an opinion on written works, 95% of the time, the person who says phrases like this isn't talking about the quality of the work but of its very existence. They're saying "why did we have to read/watch this? it didn't connect to anything" and that's where they are very, very, very... argh, just tell them, Crowley...

...thank you, dear. Right, so, why is it wrong?

Because what many people who don't write don't understand about subplots and more character-driven story arcs is that the writers sat down and decided to do that stuff for very, very specific story reasons. Readers and viewers mistake plot for story. Plot only exists in service of story and, so, all plots exist for a purpose in the story. They're all relevant. In fact, the stuff people usually label as "filler" in a story is really exactly where they should be looking to figure out what the story is saying. If you're big mad about all this time you spent with Maggie and Nina in S2, I'd say you might not still understand what S2 was about because you won't understand Aziraphale's story without understanding both Maggie and Nina's struggles in S2, for example.

A story is the whole, overall thing. It's the meanings, themes, and messages in the work. It's what's being said. It's the ideas being put forth by the piece. It's what it's about. It's different from plot, which is just the stuff the writers are making the characters do or not do in order to tell the story that they are looking to tell. Story is the art; plot is a tool used to make that art. Fiction writers can come at their story from almost anywhere to convey what it is that they are trying to say so there is meaning in the fact that they are choosing to tell their stories the way that they are telling them. They came up with these ideas for reasons.

When you dismiss stuff as filler, you're saying that it's lesser than more in-your-face and bigger plots (when, often, it's very much not), and you're telling a writer how they should have written their own story-- most of the time, without even fully seeing the ending of that story or giving any consideration to why it is that the writer wanted you to read or watch the stuff you're saying wasn't necessary. I'm not arguing that every story is perfect but you aren't getting anywhere near close to being able to evaluate a story if you're not willing to dive into what you were given and consider why it was that you were given those things and what they might mean.

Until the main question that you're asking about every single aspect of a story is "what is this saying?", you're not really fully engaging with a work. You won't get there by dismissing what the artists are telling you is important.

The secret sauce to interpreting fiction are subplots, actually. They exist to help highlight the themes of the main story, often in a slightly more direct way. If you want to understand Good Omens, starting with Ineffable Bureaucracy is actually one of the best ways to get at the core of the themes of the story. It's far from wasted time in the story.

There's actually a funny nod to the importance of subplots in 1941 when Aziraphale references Sophocles, the playwright who basically created the concept of the supporting character whose story mirrors and parallels the main character(s). The mention of Sophocles shows up in S2, the season that brings Gabriel more fully into his purpose as exactly that.

The reason why S2's plot is centered around the honestly pretty easily solvable mystery as to what's happened to Gabriel is because Gabriel, from the get-go, has been the entire story distilled down.

If you follow nothing but Ineffable Bureaucracy in Good Omens, you're going to be closer to getting what it's about and where it's going and what its end game is than you are if you are dismissing it as wasted time when we only have few episodes left. If you haven't yet seen the secret wisdom in Jim-- not to mention understand that Jim and Gabriel are the same person-- then you're probably wigging out more about the movie.

You likely think that S2 was wasted on stuff like Gabriel, or Maggie and Nina's romance, when they should have been getting to Armageddon and The Second Coming already!

You haven't yet noticed that Armageddon has more than one meaning in the series.

It's not always the literal destruction of Earth but also a person's own life crisis. We are all worlds of our own and those worlds can be put at risk if we don't let others in and take care of ourselves and those around us.

When you realize this, you can start to see that S1 goes hard with a freight train of plot all over the place that is related to Armageddon in a more Biblical, apocalyptic sense while it establishes its universe for us but that, once we know how it all works, we can get something like S2... a time where we can step back and start using Armageddon in the more figurative way that the story is also presenting it.

We need to because the story isn't about Heaven or Hell-- it's about being a person. S2 is emphasizing the deeper aspects of the themes and rolling that out at a pace more in line with a person having a few days of inner crisis. When you see that Aziraphale's crisis is the point then you can see how S1 can be about The Four Horsepeople riding to the end of the world and S2 can show War (inner conflict), Pollution (mental health issues), and Famine (symptoms of the other two; lack of food and pleasure and connection; self-starvation and self-denial) as a mental health crisis.

The point is that if you're thinking these characters need to come together to overthrow Heaven and Hell and get to the South Downs Cottage and there's no time slajdflkfwjlkejlje!?!?, then you aren't realizing that not every revolution involves guns and bombs.

People all over the world can start a love train that's far more effective. You might think a subplot about The Hellhound and The Ginger Cat learning to play nice and that they have a fuckton in common and should maybe bury the hatchet and just become eternal bffs already is filler but Crowley and Gabriel aligning is set up for the end game. It's strength in numbers and finding peace and family. They can't overthrow Heaven/Hell without help and Gabriel is the Supreme Archangel. They literally will never have a South Downs Cottage ending without a plot that helped Crowley and Aziraphale see that Gabriel and Beez are on their side.

This is the revolution in Good Omens:

It will take all the characters coming together to overthrow Heaven/Hell and set up something new for us to get a happy ending and we absolutely will. S2 is Gabriel-centric because Gabriel is the key to all of the characters getting a peaceful ending and because he's a split-directly-down-the-middle mirror of both Crowley and Aziraphale. In a season that is more about Aziraphale's inner Armageddon than about an external threat, Gabriel is vital to telling that story. The plot of S2 is every bit as important to the story as S1. I'd argue that it's even more important because takes the time to go at the themes in a slower, deeper way. It needs to because it's a story of a fall that sets up for a story in S3 of a recovery from one.

Good Omens is the absolute perfect combination of a show that is both very, very detail-oriented and full of depth while also being, secretly, an incredibly simple story. I do not mean simple in a negative way but in a chef's kiss sort of way. Simple in a tight and elegant sort of way. This is something that I think some people might not see when they're theorizing but it's something to keep in mind ahead of the movie. Not just because the movie is shorter-- this would have been relevant if we were having a longer S3, too.

Good Omens has a very engaged fan base that looks for the details, yes. *raises hand* I'm one of them lol. And there will be plenty to pour over in the movie, but... the big thing to keep in mind is that your theory needs to be something that is simple, that can be explained in under a handful of scenes, tops, and that is focused on where Aziraphale's story arc is going above anything and everything else.

If you're beginning with time loops and the birth of a new antichrist baby, I'm telling you from ages of experience reading and writing stories, you're going to be way off. If you are over here composing theories of the story that you are arguing are correct and this theory involves, idk... *makes something up* Crowley is really Elvis and Elvis is really The Bentley and when a rainbow hits Whickber Street at exactly 4 minutes into the new season, Satan will be revealed to really be Jesus, I think maybe you might be missing the point of the details that the show has given already. Like the plot, these details exist to reinforce the themes of the story. Story beats everything else-- it's what this is all about.

And what Good Omens is about? Is best summed up by Michael Sheen, in this single sentence that I really, really agree with and have paraphrased more than once in posts:

Good Omens is about the business of living. It's about the human experience, which is the experience of being a person. Everything related to Heaven and Hell and good and evil and Armageddon and supernatural things is plot that only exists to highlight a story about the complexities of being a person.

The supernatural is human and the human is supernatural.

That is what Good Omens is about.

While Crowley and Aziraphale are built as two halves of a whole and are both main characters, Aziraphale is the main character from a technical, story perspective, because he is the character whose story arc is driving both the plot and story forward. He's heading for a happy ending with Crowley in the South Downs by the end of the film. If you're making theories, start with what kind of plot would truly get him there and still fit with all of the themes of the story.

This 'it's about being a person' business is why if you look at S2 as filler and not as a season that is exploring the continuing themes on a deeper level, you're still worried about things like there being no time in a movie to show the story of a new antichrist kid being born or how they're going to fit the whole Second Coming into the movie. You don't yet see that Aziraphale parallels Adam and that being an antichrist is basically just being a person and that Aziraphale is presently the antichrist in the story. There is no antichrist child yet to be born. They won't be cutting it because it's not the story.

Armageddon since S2 has been Aziraphale's own personal one and the story from the end of S2 on is now how, if all the other characters can't come together to help him, it could also trigger Armageddon of the S1, Earth-destroying kind. It's tying a more literal Armageddon into a more figurative one. Because this story is about being a person so Armageddon is just metaphorical for going through a mental health crisis and shutting people out.

This story's themes include that every person matters and we all have to let others in and look out for one another. That there's strength in numbers. That found family and adopted family is as much family as biological family-- often, even more so. That labelling and categorizing people is bullshit and you should always open the cover and read the first sentences of people and help people whose stories begin with the same letters find one another. That it might be surprising who has things in common. It's about all of Heaven and Hell versus all of humanity, in the sense that ideas of being a perfect angel or being seen as an evil demon are concepts felt by human beings that get in the way of peace and healthy, happy living, but that fighting them is a common, human struggle, regardless of from where you come.

If you are too focused on the religious plot being the center of the film, you haven't yet seen the meaning of why the end of S1 was an eleven year old kid saving the world by telling off the bio-dad that was never there for him. You might be one of the people who thought this a silly, anti-climatic ending to that story, and don't yet realize that this is the entire story in a nutshell.

Adam can only reject Satan and keep the darkness at bay because he is surrounded-- here, literally-- by a family that supports him. He has good people for parents and was lucky enough to grow up with resources that all kids in this world should have. He has an absolutely terrific group of friends. He has this witch lady and her boyfriend and these two gay uncles that just showed up out of nowhere 😂 and his human incarnate self has what it needs to make it through this crisis, in this moment, even if he'll probably have others throughout his life, just like all of us. He's not evil incarnate and he doesn't have to be perfect-- he's just a person.

Aziraphale tells Adam this but struggles to see himself in the same way. That's what S2 is about.

S2 is about that other kid who, like Adam, breaks the season down into a single line of dialogue, David Tennant's apparent favorite from the season:

Jemimah knows who she is and she is happy to claim ownership over her art and contributions to the world. She's living her life with excitement and enthusiasm in a way that gets more complicated as we become traumatized adults. Crowley and Aziraphale struggle with this. They have been making a life together on Earth for thousands of years and each struggle, in their own ways, to truly accept that they are people who are allowed to have a life because they struggle to accept that they are people, just like everyone else.

Their story is about getting to a better place with that. That's really all Good Omens fundamentally is. That's why their ending is going to be to go live in a little cottage together that isn't a business that covers up an angelic embassy that covers up a secret love den. It's just their house-- theirs together for the life they're going to live openly together.

If you want some peace with the film, I'd advise throwing over your theories about The Second Coming and Armageddon needing to happen and antichrist kids and how Jesus fits into everything. Jesus in Good Omens is Crowley romancing Aziraphale at the crucifixion and Aziraphale using what Jesus said to Crowley to reject temptation as invitation to fuck him. I thought Jesus in a single scene or less was the most likely thing for S3 and the same holds for the movie. It's not the story. The only time The Second Coming is mentioned in S2 is by the villain and, to get there, Earth would have to first be destroyed. It won't be.

If the story is about being a messy human walking the Earth and we're in the end game now, then the story is about Aziraphale and only Aziraphale. Everything-- everything-- will be in service of Aziraphale's story arc. We already had just a few episodes with S3 and we now have even less time but the way this is going is still the same. The story is Aziraphale's fall and the other characters coming together to challenge Heaven to keep Aziraphale from eternity in Hell. That's how Armageddon is stopped this time around-- overthrowing Heaven with Aziraphale's fate as the motivation to take on The Metatron. It's nothing to do with Jesus. It's everything to do with Aziraphale.

When you see that, you can see how feasible that is in 90 minutes, with plenty of time for things like 1941, Part 3 and other flashbacks.

I think, when all is said and done, you might wind up appreciating S2 more after the film but you can get there already if you start looking at it less as meaningless fluff and start asking why it is that we were shown this story, in this way, and what that can tell us about the story we're watching.

[imrllytootiredforthis]

Clean up your mess~

pairing: Han jisung x reader

warnings: glasses hannie (cuz that's a warning in itself) fem!reader, dom!reader, sub!jisung, virgin jisung, corruption kink, miss kink, handjob, nipple play, cum-eating, oral fixation, edging, slight exhibitionism, cheating (with the intent of divorcing the one being cheated on) possibly more i forgot

word count: 4.2k

a/n: i got a spark of inspiration late last night and stayed up 'til 5 in the morning writing this, read it today and realized it was pretty much incomprehensible so rewrote it

You were bringing him lunch.

He'd forgotten his lunch today, why?

Well because you hadn't waken him up this morning, like you do every morning. Must've slipped your mind.

Nearly late for work, dashing out the door, one arm in his coat, trying to get the other on while grabbing his keys and shoving his feet into his shoes. Barking at you to bring him lunch today.

Shouting at you all the while.

After all, it was your fault. For failing your duty of being a human alarm clock for him the past however many years it'd been since you'd married him.

But it was okay.

You should've waken him up. It was your fault.

So you brought him a lunch.

A coffee you'd picked up just before and a turkey sandwich.

With tomatoes and lettuce and mayonnaise and no cheese because he's picky and only likes cheese in his ham sandwiches.

Cucumbers and just a dash of mustard-just the way he likes it.

Expecting to find him as usual, in his office. Working hard and earning money to pay for the life you had.

He certainly was working at something. Not at his work, but his dutiful little assistant.

Bent her over the desk, the thing rocking and creaking from the force. Holding her by the throat, her moans coming out scratchy as he groaned into her neck, whispering in her hair.

God, if only your own sex life could be that enthusiastic with him.

The things you've had to endure all by yourself due to his poor skills in the area. The nights you'd had to take care of yourself because he surely couldn't.

And this is what you got?

Sigh.

This is what you got for marrying a rich, semi-attractive man. An arranged marriage on both ends but you at least thought that he would stay faithful.

The divorce settlement will pay well at least, you think, pulling out your phone and taking a few pictures.

To show your lawyer, of course.

Thank heavens, they're both being so loud, they didn't even realize you came in, his desk perfectly situated that their direct line of view isn't at the door where you stand.

Snap a few more and close the door quietly behind you.

You'll have to leave his lunch at the front desk with his secretary. His particularly adorable secretary.

His nametag just slightly crooked on his button-up, reading Jisung. Looking down, distracted at something on his computer screen.

You clear your throat, admiring the way his teeth tug at his lip, intently staring at whatever's on the screen.

His eyes flash up at you, widening, body jolting as he frantically clicks at his mouse.

He tries to put on a smile and recollect himself but impulsively reaches up to readjust his glasses nervously, fighting back the blooming blush coating his cheeks.

"H-hi, Mrs. L-Y/N!" He squeaks, remembering the many times you've clicked your tongue at him and told him to call you by your first name.

"Hello Hannie! How are you today?" You smile at him,

His heart skips a beat at the nickname you'd fondly gifted him and he nods. "I'm good, better that you're here now! I've missed seeing you around!"

"Aww," you glance towards your husbands office, still seeing the blinds shut. Then your attention is back on Han, fully and wholly. "I've missed you too, I've just been so busy with everything, you understand."

He adjusts his glasses again, a bright smile lighting up his face. "Ah, yes. Been there, done that. I completely understand."

He doesn't understand, has not the foggiest idea but the way you're looking at him.

It shouldn't have him feeling this way.

You're his boss's wife. He could get fired and lose this job he really needs.

But...you're you.

And oh, he really just wants to impress you.

And your small laugh makes his heart flutter. "Oh of course you do, it's too bad that someone can never seem to." You gesture over to the door. "Y'know, that always one of the things that I've loved about you Hannie, how you get me in ways that he's never have."

Perhaps he's being delusional.

Perhaps it's that he can't read the signs right but the bitterness in your tone when you speak of him, the way your lips twist in distaste compared to the way you say his name.

Hannie.

With such warmth and a fond look in your eye. A fond look that maybe suggests...

He adjusts his glasses but this time you grab his wrist, stopping him. "Stop that won't you, darling? It's so distracting."

His skin tingles where you touch him and he's sure he couldn't be redder, he can feel his skin hot and can't help but stare helplessly where your hand is wrapped around him.

"I-uh, u-um,"

Just as quick as you'd grabbed him, you were letting him go. "Well anyway, I'm sorry Hannie, but I'm afraid that I can't stay for long. I'm just here to drop off some lunch for the boss. And I can see that he's a bit...busy right now, you'll be a good little pet for me and give it to him once he...finishes up, won't you?"

His breath hitches at it. Frozen in place, staring, blinking hard, trying desperately not to do something embarrassing...or fireable...or both.

But he inevitably fails as he reaches to grab the brown paper bag and coffee set on the desk in front of you, instead, his still slightly shaking, slightly trembling hand, knocking the coffee onto the floor and all over you.

"Fuck!" You hiss, more from the feeling of the still-hot liquid pouring onto your skin than from the fabric being ruined itself.

Han squeaks, wide-eyed before he stands up quickly, the first immediate reaction he's been able to have since you've arrived and rushes to the other side of the desk, "Shit, shit, god I'm so sorry-are you okay?"

He scrambles to grab a tissue box, trying to sop up the mess but ultimately proving himself to not be very good at it. "I'm fine. I'm fine. It's okay."

"I'm sorry, I really didn't mean-"

"-I know, I know you didn't. But it's okay. Give me the tissues." You pull the from his frantic hands. "Try to clean up the mess on the floor. I can do this."

He apologizes again, before taking the tissue box, not the best device but it'll work for now and starts trying to do just that.

You try to soak up more of the coffee from your clothes but there's really nothing else you can do, it's not that big a deal anyway.

You could always just get it replaced or professionally washed.

Especially with that settlement money, and you wouldn't have your husband up your ass telling you to control your spending like it was an allowance or something.

"Here. Let me help." You sigh, leaning down to try to help.

He shakes his head insistently, pulling the tissue box away from you. "No. This is my fault I'm gonna clean it all up."

You sigh at his stubborness. Simply giving him a look and holding out your hand. "Jisung."

The boy in question shakes his head again, and you lift your eyebrows. He pouts. "N-"

You curl your finger under his chin, forcing him to look up, cup in hand, dirty tissues in the other and you realize the position you've put yourself in.

Him crouched down, all too close in front of you, looking up, his normally adorably wide eyes giving a much different perspective than it has before.

He's realized too. "U-um, M-miss-"

"-Y/N."

He breathes heavily, his body slouching in on itself, his tilting his head more up to make up for the lost height. "I, I..."

"It's okay, use your words." You encourage, leaning down the rest of the way, coming face to face.

But he's already forgotten what he was going to say, had he even had something to say in the first place., he doesn't really remember if he did with your hand now on his cheek and the other taking the empty cup out of his hand reaching up and setting it on the desk again.

"F-fine. But I'm going to do most of the work okay? I-i can show you to the storage closet so we can get cleaning supplies?" It comes out more like a question but either way you don't question it.

Instead you stand up, pulling him up along with you. "Okay. Good, so where is the storage closet?"

--

Honestly, you'd never been in a real storage closet but you'd think it would be bigger than this.

It was tiny, filled with shelves of cleaning supplies and a broom, mop, and a few extras tucked into the corner.

All in all, there was absolutely no way it could fit more than three people and even two was a very tight squeeze as you followed him inside.

He struggles to find the light as you close the door, leaving the room in darkness.

"Where's the lightswitch?" You whisper.

He makes a noise of frustration. "I dunno, open the door again so I can-wait there it is," He reaches over your shoulder but stumbles, shoving you back into the door with a loud thud.

The light switches on and there he is.

Really, really close. His nose practically pressed against yours, glasses slid down halfway. "H-hi." His breath smells like gum, not the minty kind but the actual bubblegum kind, sweet and hot against your face.

"Hi."

The light isn't very bright, flickering and hanging swaying on the ceiling it's barely enough to illuminate the small room.

He swallows and you can hear it from how close he is.

He should move but he can't quite bring himself to. You smell so good. He can't even begin to put his finger on what it is but it certainly making his head spin and the way you're looking at him-the way you're looking at him-

The next thought is scrambled in his mind as you take his glasses and push them up his nose, fixing them for him. "There you go."

"Y-you can't just do that?" He whispers weakly, trying to ignore the proximity of your bodies now.

Your leg is practically pressed up to his crotch with how close the two of you are and fuck, if it isn't driving him insane.

"What? What am I doing?"

Everything.

You breath is fanning across his face. Your hand is resting, hovering right over the side of his face from when you moved his glasses. He's pretty sure you just inched your leg farther between his legs, pressed your thing against him more.

His eyes slip shut but even so, he still knows you're still looking at him, can practically feel your gaze burning into him.

Maybe if he closes his eyes he can forget about everything else.

Forget about the less than romantic setting around him. The bottle of cleaning spray on the shelf right beside his head reeking of chemicals that are making his head spin.

Well he doesn't actually know if it's the chemicals making it spin or you.

"Y-you're to-touching me."

“You're the one pressing me against the door Hannie." You tease.

He knows you're right. Knows you're trying to tease him. Knows that he doesn't want to move at all.

"B-but,"

"Does it have an effect on you?” He can feel as you shift, however that was made possible, closer to him. 

“A-nd if I told you that it does?" He can't bring himself to open his eyes. "What about my boss? Your husband? This can ruin you. I can get fired."

He can feel your hands sliding over him. Both starting at his shoulders before trailing down. You scoff "Bastard did it first." Then, "He doesn't matter anyway. I'm leaving him."

You squeeze at his hips as a test, hearing the way he holds back a muffled moan and tuck that away for later.

He finally looks at you. "Y-you are?"

You lick a stripe up his neck and he finally moans. "Mhmm, going to see my lawyer tomorrow to file for divorce."

Nibbling at his ear, hands exploring lower, finally reaching his pants and moving back to graze over his ass. You squeeze and he gasps loudly, rolling his hips in a way that begs for more.

"S-so he ch-cheated on you then?" You brush a finger lower, over his hole and he tugs at his lip with his teeth, muffling a whine.

You pull back entirely, leaving him cold all while lifting an eyebrow. "Curious thing, aren't you Hannie?" He nods senselessly, not caring what you say so much as you would touch him again. "I think that they're more things you should be curious about."

Finally, finally, your fingers hover over his belt. "Can I?"

"Please~"

You stop and he groans with impatience. "What now?" He whines in a way that would be almost cute if it wasn't so bratty.

Huh, you'd never peg Han as a brat.

"Don't talk to me like that. I'm the one making you feel good here, so shut up and take it." You hiss.

He pouts but his eyes are alight in amusement. "I'd shut up if you were actually doing something..." He leans in with a newfound confidence you'd never expect from him. "So in other words...make me."

"Oh Hannie," You take his glasses off and wipe them of the condensation built up, full intentions of clouding them up all over again.

You click your tongue disapprovingly before resting back on his nose. "Just remember, you asked for this."

"Yes Miss."

He nods along, swiping his tongue over his lips and you smile, nearly cooing at how cute he looks as you pull his belt undone, placing your lips next to his ear. "And don't lie to me. Tell me everything you feel and let me hear every noise you make."

Then your hands are slipping down into his pants, making his head spin and his toes curl in his shoes.

"S-shit, ah!" His eyes flutter closed. "Don't stop. Please, don't stop."

As your one hand thumbs over his slit, the other pulls his pants down the rest of the way, dropping both his pants and his boxers down around his ankles.

The next thing Han knows, he's being pushed into the wall, the smell of the cleaning spray strong in his head making him feel desperately dizzy. Or maybe that was from you, looking at him all dark and mean standing there over him.

Or maybe your hand wrapped around his cock, he's so hard and you feel so good. Fuck, he doesn't understand how it could all feel so good.

Or maybe it's your other hand, wandering up his chest and landing on his nipple, leaving him gasping, begging you to stop, begging you to continue. His back arching off the wall into you and a choked moan before he's pawing at your wrists.

"D-don't," but he's non-committal, fingers weakly tugging at your hand nowhere near as forceful if actually wanted you to stop. "I-i'll cum right away if you do that." He cries.

You ignore him and continue. The time a little harder. Pinching it and slightly tugging as he sobs in pleasure.

"I don't know why you think you're in charge here honey," watching him swallow heavily, throat bobbing. "but you're not. And if I wanna play with you, I'm going to." A cry of pleasure is ripped from somewhere deep inside of him, body convulsing. "Gonna wind you up like a little toy until I'm satisfied."

Every nerve set aflame. Every piece of himself free for you to play with. Every little part of his brain sent into overdrive as his hips work automatically, messy and sloppy into your loose grip. Chest pushed farther into your hand although he still begs weakly for you to stop.

"'M your toy. Yes, your toy for you!"

He's shaking, body nearly limp. From what? A few touches to his cock and his nipples? Maybe he's just sensitive. Or maybe it's something else.

"Have you done this before?" You murmur, already knowing your answer but desperate for the confirmation.

"U-um, a-a few times-"

You stop, keeping your hand wrapped around him but still but taking your other hand entirely out of his shirt, taking his face in your hand.

He whines, pawing at your arms needily, forcefully enough that you can tell he's really trying. "No lying, Hannie. I thought I told you that."

His hips move of their own accord, fucking his cock into your fist as much as you'll allow before you pull away completely, ripping a cry from him.

"N-no, don't stop," He tries to bring his own hands down, tries to tip himself over the edge before it's gone but you don't let him.

You grip his wrists, reminding him of when you did it earlier at his desk. He whines again and you think you can see a tear slip down his adorable cheeks "Please no, please don't stop."

He can hardly believe that not even an hour ago you'd dropped off your husbands lunch.

You purse your lips, even in the dark of the room able to see the his eyes from the sheen of the gloss spread over them, only slightly hidden by the fogged up glasses that have slipped down lower to perch on his nose. "What did I tell you? About lying?"

His hiccupy gasps are so cute. "D-don't lie."

"Good." He shivers, your hand finally loosely wrapping around him again. "Then why did you lie to me, Jisung?"

He mewls as you speed up, trying to respond over the fog in his head. "'M sorry miss! M' sorry I lied, I've never done this before!" He gasps, "you're the first, you're the only!"

A moan spills out of his pretty pink lips and you claim them with your own, swallowing the next and the next after that.

Pulling away just slightly to whisper against his lips. "Good boy, Hannie. Such a good boy for me aren't you?"

"Y-yes, yes Miss, 'm a good boy."

Your lips curl up and your hand ventures to his hip, rubbing the area you'd pegged as sensitive and what a surprise, you're right.

His eyes flutter shut with a high keen. "And you know what?"

A meek, "what?" comes from him despite how dazed he is.

"Good boys get rewards."

Your hand moves quicker and he swears he can see stars exploding behind his eyes.

And then your hand's digging so hard into his hip, he's pretty sure-no he's positive it'll leave a mark there.

"God," His glasses are so fogged that he can barely see a thing even if his eyes weren't already in the back of his skull.

"I'm no god pretty thing. But I can sure make you feel like heaven." You whisper and he shudders, legs shaking under him so hard he doesn't think he could hold his weight up if it weren't for the wall behind him.

Breathless and beautiful and feeling bone-achingly high with pleasure he can barely choke out the words. "F-faster, pl-please, please...." He gasps. "I-i'm s-so, please I'm so cl-close."

You can't help but coo. "Cum whenever you need to baby, been such a good boy."

And he does.

Mouth hanging open, tears stained on the apple of his cheek which are such a pretty shade of pink. His glasses so fogged you can't even see what his eyes are doing.

Face entirely blissed out as his orgasm hits him head on like a fucking train, cute little gasps and small mewls falling from his open lips.

And quite suddenly, you're all too aware that only a thin door separates you from the entirety of the rest of the office.

And Han is still moaning loudly, sniffling and gasping. Looking and sounding like the main lead in a cheap porn movie.

In other words, loud as fuck.

You're pretty sure the damage is already done. People have already heard. But you cover his mouth with your hand anyway, muffling the noises.

His eyes widen, the touch bringing him slightly back and his eyes shoot to the door, making the same revelation that you did.

"You gotta be quiet baby" You whisper, looking around for paper towel, perhaps a clean rag that you can clean him up with, but then you look back to his pretty face.

And slowly pull your hand away. "You gotta clean up your mess baby." His eyes widen as you bring your cum-covered hand to his lips. "Wanna clean it up?"

His breath hitches. He nods frantically and begins to eagerly lap at your hand, moaning and wrapping his lips around your fingers.

You watch, entranced, pupils blown wide, watching him hungrily and when he's cleaned that up and your hand is slick with his saliva you scoop up the mess he's left all over his abdomen, bringing it to his lips once more.

He's so far gone he doesn't even realize when it's done, still pulling your fingers into his mouth, sucking on them and laving attention around each and every finger.

He can't even hear you as you brush back his hair, "You okay Hannie?"

Doesn't hear until your fingers thread through his hair, providing a grip to tug his head back, focusing his attention back on you with a moan.

"You good?"

He nods quickly, but doesn't look like he's telling the truth, still staring at you hand, tongue still peeking out from his mouth.

"Are you sure? Don't lie."

That has him snapping out of it, shaking him head with a forceful kind of clearing it before leaning down to pull up his pants. "Y-yeah. I'm good."

He's a mess. Messy hair and foggy glasses, red face and sweat still dripping down his neck.

He looks like someone who's just been properly fucked.

Voices outside talk about lunch, where they're going and you know you're husband's looking for his lunch right about now.

You quickly pick up a mop. "Okay. Um, pass me the spray behind your head?" He does, slightly shaky and a little slow still. "So, I'm gonna go and start cleaning the coffee up. You're gonna leave a few minutes after I do, head to the bathroom. Clean yourself up a bit, okay?"

Nodding animately, your hand grips the doornob.

"Wait!"

You turn back.

He looks almost like a puppy, all wide-eyed and begging. "What does this mean for us?" His heart thumps wildly. "Because I like you. I really do Mi-Y/N and I don't know if you like me or if maybe I'm just here for a stress relief or what?"

You don't know.

With your husband and the lawyer you're going to see about him tomorrow, it's really now a good idea to get into something like this.

It couldn't go well for you. But he looks so hopeful and he's so adorable and sweet and maybe you could envision something with him.

He wasn't just a stress-relief and that was for sure but what else could he possibly be right now?

Now is really not a good time to figure it out

"Do you have your phone on you?"

He shakes his head no, so you glance over and grab a sharpie off the shelf. "Here then." You lift his sleeve and begin to write on his forearm.

You finish and pull away, throwing the marker back where you found it. He scrutinizes the ink on his skin. "What's this?"

"My number. I like you too, Jisung. But now is not a really good time, call me later and we can meet up somewhere and talk, okay?" You try to sound as gentle as possible but you can tell that he's not very satisfied with that answer.

"Fine. We'll talk later."

You smile gently at him, making his heart do somersaults in his chest before you're opening the door and stepping out.

a/n: just mind the horrible grammar and anything that sounds off, i write this so late last night and tried to fix everything but probably missed a lot of things, that being said i'll prolly proofread it again later

[notmorbid]

poor deer.

dialogue prompts from poor deer: a novel by claire oshetsky.

enough of your pretty lies. it's time to tell the truth.

here, the boundary between the practical and the supernatural is razor-thin.

stop stalling. it's time to confess what you did.

don't go far.

time for you to go home, then.

i'll be very sad if you go to a better place without me.

what an old stick in the mud you are.

you're the same liar you've always been.

what are you staring at? go.

didn't you ever come to bed?

a nap will do you good.

you are full of surprises.

time moves sideways, through the most important moments of our lives.

it's been so long since i met any new people.

i don't know how to behave, or where to put my eyes.

i admire your panache.

you haven't been out of this room all day, have you?

run away. run straight home.

you ought not to be alone. please stay.

come here, funny bunny.

do you miss ____?

that was a wicked thing to say.

you are never to repeat that awful lie again.

i just want to shut my eyes and sleep forever.

i hadn't expected to meet you.

why are you so kind to me?

whenever i'm happy, something bad is sure to follow.

i don't understand you one bit.

my little changeling child.

you don't have a shred of compassion.

did your mother tell you that?

[name] isn't an angel. [name] is in the ground.

i will never think what those other people think about you.

please, dear. please look at me. i love you.

you know as well as i do what true memories feel like.

buck up. the worst is over.

do you understand what you did? do you even know what you've done?

you can't lie to me. you can't hide from the truth.

you'll be seeing me.

everything is always better in the morning. i promise.

everything is the same as it ever was.

cat got your tongue?

what you need is a good hug.

you're home now. you're safe.

the days kept happening. the world kept turning.

would you like to tell your story to me? i'd love to hear it.

you can be a remarkable little liar sometimes.

you're old enough to know heaven is just a pretty story, aren't you?

go home to your mother. your mother will know what to do.

some things are forever, and other things are never again.

you can't help me. i know that now.

this is my secret hideout. i made it.

what happened to you?

do you think you're being charming?

it looks like it's going to be just you and me, for the time being.

i think we should go on a little vacation somewhere special. just us two. what do you think?

i'm not asking your permission. i'll be back when i'm back.

any old fool can drive a car.

given enough faith, you can do the impossible. and don't you forget it.

you will change the world for the better, i know it.

can you tell me, please, how to get to [place]?

you once said i'd be the death of you, and you were right.

i've always imagined purgatory was the kind of place you could stumble into by accident.

will you ever let me try to make it up to you?

i've traveled this route before, in my dreams.

it couldn't have been ___ you saw. you must have seen somebody else.

i'm running out of time to find my happy ending.

did the light wake you?

you are the strangest girl i have ever met.

there is very little goodness or love in this story.

you never need to worry about ____, ever again.

your story isn't over yet.

are you my angel, or my devil?

you're still young. when you're my age, you'll understand.

you never can tell what a child will grow up to be.

i admire you for accepting life as it comes.

you're never coming back, are you?

i'm here. i'm not going anywhere. here is my hand.

is that you, out so early?

we're approaching the end of our necessary small talk.

i've come to ask for your forgiveness.

you're welcome to stay as long as you like.

one day, i might forgive myself.

[kalinara]

(X-Men #14, Fall of the House of X #1, X-Men #1 - 2024)

So one of the things that I've been wanting to blog about since I went back to my origins to be a full on Cyclops-centered comics blog again, is how delightful (and maybe a bit delightfully dysfunctional) I find the modern Jean Grey and Scott Summers relationship.

You probably have an idea of where this is going already, given the number of top/bottom jokes I've made about the two. (Technically they're probably domme/sub jokes, but it's funnier to use the other terms. Also, I'm pretty sure they engage in telekinetic pegging.)

So I'm putting it behind a cut, because it's long and rambly, and with additional scans. But nothing in it should be a surprise.

Anyway it really is genuinely fascinating to me.

First of all, I'm very happy with the modern, and I think ORIGINAL, interpretation of the Jean Grey - Phoenix relationship, where the Phoenix is, always has been, and always will be, a part of Jean Grey herself. I always thought the possession/replacement story was unnecessary, and it's far more interesting to look at it as Jean all along.

But more importantly, given my focus, is that I'm delighted at how this has shaken out into this absolutely fascinating Goddess-Mortal dynamic between these two characters.

I chose the panels that I did for this post, because I feel like they really illustrate Scott's side of their relationship dynamic. You have poor Jean, who fears her power and what she might do, and constantly tries to atone for the damage she'd done in the past when she'd lost control of herself* (and I want to get back to the Dark Phoenix Saga, in a bit). And then you have Scott, whose reaction to the fact that his wife is maybe the most powerful being in the universe appears to be "my wife can beat up the entire universe, and it is fucking awesome!"

I mean look at these panels. The first one is from Judgment Day, a story that could prompt so much meta in its own right. We've seen how the Progenitor works at this point - he judges the vast majority of people and finds them wanting. A lot of times the root of his judgment seems to be based either on the character's own guilt and sense of failure (see e.g. Steve Rogers and Matt Murdock), or their complete apathy and disinterest in improvement (see: Charles Xavier). Scott seems like a sitting duck for the first kind of judgment: he IS prone to self-hatred and is haunted by his bad decisions and mistakes.

But he does something unexpected: he denies that the Progenitor has any right to judge him at al. He's willingly given that authority to only one person. And she's not here right now. And he PASSES.

Sadly, the Progenitor does end up throwing this back onto Jean during HER test:

(A.X.E. - X-Men #1)

Sadly, Scott's dead right now and not really able to clarify. But we as readers can go back and look at that top panel. That is not a man who is petrified of his wife. He may well sleep in the lair of the red dragon, but he LIKES it that way.

Basically, Scott Summers passed his Judgment Day test for being a massive submissive. And I love that.

And we see the "only my wife can judge me/would you like to meet her" thing again when Scott's on trial in Fall of the House of X.

And it's fascinating in context, because only a few issues before, he and Jean were on the outs, and she basically DOES judge him:

(It's probably wrong how hot I find it when she holds back his powers like that. It's like power-bondage or something.)

Anyway, this is from X-Men #23. In two issues, he'll be captured. She'll be DEAD. And everything goes straight to Hell. And yeah, they've implicitly resolved their issues before hand (since he's agreeing to leave the X-Men with her in Hellfire Gala), but it's still very sudden.

But in that panel, up there, he has no doubts at all. They were on the outs. She's dead. He's been tortured. And still, facing a kangaroo court, he's completely unwavering in his faith in her.

It's lovely.

Sentimentality aside, the key takeaway here is that he's not afraid of her. Even now, when she's fully integrated her power and is up in space re-igniting stars, he's not afraid of her. I'm actually not sure if he was even afraid of her in the Dark Phoenix Saga. Afraid FOR her, yes. And he certainly recognized when she lost it and tried to talk her down (and seemed to be succeeding, until Xavier interrupted!).

We do see, at one single point, Scott express any kind of feeling of inferiority to Jean. And that's in that truly delightful From the Ashes, Infinity storyline where, when she's freeing him from telepathic captivity, he shows her the hidden files in his mind - how he'd fantasized about them growing old together, and how he knows that won't happen now.

(I love the infinity comics, but it's so hard to blog with them, you know?)

But yeah, Scott's one point of vulnerability with regard to the inequality in their relationship has nothing to do with power. He just doesn't want to be forgotten.

So anyway, I included the last scan because, vulnerable issues aside, overall, he really does seem to enjoy the fact that his wife is the more powerful cavalry, who'll happily come to save and/or avenge him and is very happy to use that against anyone he wants.

It's cute and even a little childish in a fascinating way. "My dad can beat up your dad." Only it's wife, instead of dad.

(Look, I've already done the meta about Scott Summers dating people who parallel his many abusive father figures. The fact that both Emma Frost and Jack Winters have unbreakable diamond alternate forms ALONE...well...)

But we are talking about a man who hadn't really been a child since the day his parents' plane crashed, who bounced from abusive situation to abusive situation, without any hope of rescue (even from the father who was STILL ALIVE in space somewhere). It must be an incredibly heady feeling to be able to say, "YES, my wife is bigger than you and will ALWAYS come to save me."

It might be a bit of a gender subversion on the whole historical romance novel premise of the abused servant girl getting to run off with the warlord who would kill everyone who looked at her wrong.

(I also suspect there's an element of "Okay, fuck it. Everyone's blamed me for everything for so long, including me, that I'm just going to bend over and let HER punish me. And that's IT.")

As for what Jean gets out of the deal, well, she's got someone who will never be afraid of her, who admires every time she lets loose with her power, and thinks she's beautiful and amazing, and helps keep her connected with her past, her self and humanity, not by trying to rein her in, but by providing her with basic human comforts (like an unnecessary space ship), simply to make her happy.

Let's just hope that nothing ever happens to him. Because, well, as I've said before, the thing that most adaptations miss about the Dark Phoenix Saga, is that it's never been about a woman being too powerful for anyone's good. It's about a woman who gets repeatedly gaslit, manipulated, mentally fucked around with, who then watches the man she love get hurt and (apparently) die without being able to do anything about it.

...well, I'm a whump fan who likes seeing powerful ladies wreak havoc to rescue hurt and vulnerable men. So I know what I would like to see happen...

[coraniaid]

I'm pretty critical of Buffy's final season (because ... well, I've watched it), but there are some things I think it does well and, since I'm trying to talk myself into working on my S7 AU fic again, I thought it might be worth trying to write down what they are.

I like the sense of completeness there is in going back to some of the show's beginnings. I like seeing Buffy in school again, but this time as an adult with a job. It doesn't just let us re-examine the high school years from a new perspective, it gives Buffy's arc over the last few seasons a nice sense of direction. I like what little we see of Dawn in high school. (I wish there were more episodes like Help.) In principle, I even like the fact that this season's Big Bad is a supernatural threat we've seen on the show before.

While I think there are a lot of problems with the execution (and even with the wider concept) of making the First Evil the primary (frequently the only) antagonist, the First being around does give you a lot of possibilities for having characters literally come face to face with their pasts. I like the final scene of Lessons and I like Conversations With Dead People and I like seeing the Mayor on screen again. I wish the show had done more with this concept.

I like meeting new (Potential) Slayers and finding out more about past Slayers. I like Robin Wood. I like Kennedy. (I wish the show did a better job making the audience care about any of the other Potentials.) I like that Faith comes back. I like that there is a focus on what it means to be a Slayer this season (compare how the show opens, with Buffy taking Dawn on patrol and telling her "it's about power..." [which Dawn doesn't have], to the scene in Chosen where Buffy asks the Potentials "what if you could have that power?").

I also (sorry) really like the fact that the writers resisted the urge to make Dawn a Potential or have her suddenly develop any magical powers as a result of being the Key (which there are at least rumours they were talking about doing). I like that the show stuck with the idea that Dawn is the part of Buffy who gets to be an ordinary girl.

For all its flaws (silly CGI battle against monsters I don't care about which is resolved by a random mcguffin from a different show; weird retcon about Sunnydale apparently being inland; a bunch of other unfortunate writing choices I won't get into here) I really do like Chosen a lot. It feels very fitting that the show ends with Buffy both finally getting to leave Sunnydale and with her no longer having to shoulde the burden of being "the" Slayer (or one of only two Slayers, anyway) anymore. I love how open-ended and hopeful that manages to be.

And speaking of Chosen, I like Buffy's "cookie dough" speech. I like the fact that the show lets Buffy end the series single, and recognizing that she doesn't have to be in a serious romantic relationship if she doesn't feel she's ready for one right now. (I like post-S7 Fuffy as a concept a lot, sure, but I think I prefer it as something that neither of them rushes into.)

I like that Amy comes back? I mean, I don't like anything the season does with her, but still: points for remembering she exists, I guess.

I like the fact that Willow gets to grieve Tara but also move on with her life and start dating again. [I don't know if I would have killed Tara off if I was writing S6 -- I think probably not -- but given that Tara did die I think this is the only good option.]

Empty Places is a good .... name for an episode?

For all my (many, many) issues with Andrew Wells this season (and in particular with just how much Andrew Wells is in this season, which is ... a lot), I think Storyteller is ... pretty good? I liked Jonathan, I think it's sad he dies (and his speech about missing high school now that he's left is another good moment from this season) but I wouldn't really have wanted to have him turn up and help save the day either. Having Andrew kill him (and then have to face up to the fact) feels like the right choice, to me, if you were going to bring either character back [I'm not really sure I would have done that though, to be honest].

Equally, for all my irritation at the time wasted on the "is Giles the First Evil?" subplot and at some of the other character deaths the writers did go for, I'm glad that the Core Four all survive. What the season actually does with Giles isn't very good, and neither Xander nor Willow are in this season enough (especially not in its second half), but at least they all get to live.

Oh, and Anya. I'm glad the writers didn't give in to the temptation to kill off Anya for some sort of cheap shock value, the way some leaked early drafts of Chosen suggest they were thinking of doing. Can you imagine how infuriating that would have been? I don't know if I would ever have accepted it. I might even now be living in denial. Thankfully common sense prevailed there and Anya definitely survived.

[docholligay]

Your thoughts on the situation of the healthcare CEO that was gun down on Wednesday?

I think every predictable take I might have, I've seen a bunch of. So, I mean, what is there to add to that particular conversation? People familiar with me are pretty familiar with my thoughts, so, I mean if you were looking to hear me pop off about the predictability or this particular event, or revel in vigilante justice...everyone else has done it for me. I might have said those things! But i sat on this, and now everyone else has said them.

So I'll say the one thing I HAVEN'T seen anyone else say. I give this the "Most likely to be read in bad faith" post yearbook award. Something I've been thinking about.

I think it's easy to swim into the ocean and eventually not realize you are so far out you can't swim back. You're gonna drown out there. I wonder how many people that happens to.

This isn't me being sympathetic to the guy--I am not--but I wonder how many of us have been in what we would desperately tell ourselves is a much lower position that is not in any way actually contributing to the misery of the world, and how far could we climb while telling ourselves that? When do the excuses have to stop?

I don't have an answer for this, actually, fuck, i worked for the legal department of a stagecoach bank, but tell you what I didn't sleep very well at night. But, I've been turning it over in my head. When do you become the sort of person who people are okay with being dead? This is across the aisle. If there were a horrible car accident, and someone was killed who worked for the foreclosures department of a bank, would you say something like, "ooooh too bad, vulture." What about someone who wrote the program that streamlined healthcare denials, are they only a programmer? Or are they complicit in evil, too? When are we allowed to live a compromised moral life, and when are we not?

For example, I would light up whoever the informant was. I hope they get doxxed, I hope their life is miserable, I hope that they are badgered so thoroughly that they fuckin choke on it. But I'm sure there's someone out there saying, "Hm, actually, a McDonald's employee probably needs the money for her disabled ADHD child who is living in a cardboard box, intersectionally, and there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so we can do whatever, actually." If an argument for that can be made, when are we, as human beings, allowed to be bought? When do the scales tip?

I don't have an answer for this. I have compromised my ethics for money. But it does have me wondering, how much line do we give someone before saying, "No. You are evil, now." And is it only when I imagine them to be more prosperous than I am? I don't know. I wish it was clearer to me. I worry I might make moral compromises that make another version of me fine with my death. I, I mean we do, all of us, make plenty of excuses for my behavior that is selfish or otherwise less than stellar.

I'm so happy this dude got gunned down in the middle of Manhattan and WHEN is that moment? WHEN have they gone so far from shore that I no longer see them as a person in the haze? The gears of the system grind to a halt without people willing to service it, so when does blame start and stop? I don't know! I don't know!

I mean, leave it to me to make a moral quandary out of something everyone loves! Leave it to me to be unable to enjoy my own delight in this! But. It's me, what are you gonna do? I do know that I had a short stint at a job I was fucking great at, paid well, and had to drop because I realized fundamentally I was a bad person. For me the line was extremely fucking clear. Crystal. I'm great at rhetoric and emotional appeal, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination because I'm still not proud of it. But what if the bright line had not appeared to me? What if all I would have seen is my financial comfort? I don't know.

On a completely different note, you know what, this is fucking praxis. I think people doing evil should be afraid. Do y'all remember that part of the reason ACA passed is PEOPLE WERE GETTING YELLED AT IN RESTAURANTS? They couldn't go anywhere! Bring up this energy. I am keeping a keen fucking eye out for my reps, and believe that I am more than happy to make a scene. What happens, I get arrested for being a public nuisance? oh no, oh woe. Most likely scenario is a get bounced from wherever I am. Whatever.

I think everyone involved will consider their lives a lot more carefully if they can't go out in public without worrying about getting shot or yelled at. I love the wanted posters. There are a fucking lot of us. We need to get up off our fucking duffs and remember that we are this fucking country. I don't care that they have the government, I am not going to comply in advance. We're gonna have to face the BIG SCARIES and start harassing people. Pick up the phone. Yell in a grocery store. Fuck, most of you live in such big places no one will ever know, I actually run the risk of pissing off my community and being on the outs.

So yeah, my thoughts are, "It's good for them to be scared, and good for us to rememebr that we can make them scared" as a small thought, but, "This dude grew up in Iowa as the son of a grain elevator worker. When was the moment he became evil, and did he recognize it? Would I ever recognize it in myself?" as my big personally terrifying thought.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Sorry if you answered this before but do you plan on watching S6 of Miraculous ?

I'm not sure. I'm certainly not planning to watch it as it comes out, but I may watch it once it's streaming. While I'm clearly quite critical of canon, I did genuinely enjoy a lot of things prior to season five. Little moments and character interactions that made it worth watching the individual episodes even though the overall plot kinda sucked. It was a good blend of entertaining in the micro and bad in the macro, making it something enjoyable for my partner and I to watch and then talk about.

Season five wasn't like that. There are a mere handful of good moments and most episodes gave me nothing of value, so I'm very hesitant to give canon more of my time. This is extra true because season five ended the show's first big arc, making it a really good off point as I'll fully admit that seeing Gabriel's ultimate fate was a draw for me. Now? There's really nothing left to look forward to. I no longer care about the canon square, Lila is one of the most obnoxious villains ever written, and both of our "leads" have been character assassinated into characters I don't really want to watch, mostly because they're not allowed to learn and grow, but they have the kind of character flaws that desperately need them to learn and grow for their characters to stay engaging.

Marinette's issues are pretty obvious, but Adrien was done equally dirty, just in the exact opposite way. It's really hard to get excited about for a male lead who isn't strong enough to make it to the final fight after five seasons of promising that it was "us against the world." Especially when every other character was able to overcome the nightmare dust! At least Marinette is doing things and talking to people even if those people aren't necessarily the people she should talk to and her actions aren't the ones she should be taking. Adrien just keeps sitting stuff out and doing nothing to change his situation because one of his big flaws is his passivity and it's aggravating! He's supposed to be an action hero!

And before anyone rants at me about victim blaming, please remember that this is a story and Adrien is a fictional character who - as best I can tell - isn't even intentionally written as a victim. While he is one in terms of what actually happened, the story does not seem to view him as one so I don't think his writing is some active choice to rep victims and, even if it was, I'd still have issues with their choices.

Either way, Miraculous is not the type of show that is here to give us deep character analysis. It's a rom-com superhero show for kids and that is the type of content I tuned in to watch. I was here for Ladybug-the-smart-badass and her faithful, flirty hero partner, but the show is giving me nothing on either front. Ladynoir was barely a thing in season five and I don't think we got a single Ladrien moment. Those relationship dynamics were my two biggest draws. My third tier dynamic was Adrienette and even that failed me because they didn't even give us Marinette growing up enough to be the one to ask Adrien out because, as stated above, the characters are not allowed to grow because that would mean that the episodes have to be watched in a specific order and it leads to terrible writing choices.

I've honestly given the show way more time than I ever planned while running this blog! I didn't expect it to get popular enough where I'd go away for a week and come back to over a dozen asks! I just wanted to vent about season five for a bit because the writing was just so incredibly bad that I needed an outlet to stop stewing over it. I've found that writing a thing down and throwing it into the ether is a great way to get my brain to move on and stop thinking about it, thus the blog.

[nothorses]

What is your opinion on terf blocklists, where every one on there at the time had clear and intentional radfem beliefs pushing shitty ideas about trans people and easily identifiable as to what exactly they believe via what they say and circulate and who they constantly reblog shitty things about trans people from?

I promise this is a genuine good faith question; I want to understand if the thing I've been taught be others to do with the purported intention of eliminating platforms for terfs to protect ourselves and others is actually helpful or if that also has far reaching consequences I hadn't considered before. I'm trying to think about it but struggling with the idea I got taught to do them/follow them (blocklists) for being to identify correctly and block, not harass. But do the harms of encouraging that approach actually outweigh the benefits and that doesn't change even if the blocklist is for actual bigots?

Again, genuine question. Trying to learn.

I think the problem here is less in how a blocklist is constructed; it's not hard to imagine that a list can be made under strict enough criteria, with enough careful vetting, to contain only Genuinely Bad People- or at least people who would not object to being placed in the category of that list. It's also not hard to come up with categories of people that feel morally reprehensible enough, and unattached from any marginalized identity enough, to be "safe" to target: it would be absurd to argue against a "Nazi blocklist" that contains only self-proclaimed Nazis.

The problem also isn't really in how blocklists are intended to be used; it's pretty fair that someone might want a list of people to block pre-emptively in order to avoid harassment, particularly when that harassment is bigoted. It's not hard to imagine that someone making such a list is doing so with the intent that it only be used for blocking, and that they might even make an effort to say as much in the post. And at that point, is it really their fault if someone goes against their clearly-stated wishes?

The problem is that a blocklist is, by fundamental design, "free research". It's put forth entirely so other people do not have to do their own research, which means the entire premise discourages people from doing that research.

You aren't offering up a list of people that others should go look into and form their own opinion about, you're offering up a list of people you already did the research on so people can copy/paste and be done with it. It would be counterproductive- and frankly silly- to post a blocklist with some "but make sure to double check these yourself!" disclaimer, because like, that's not the point of the list. Nobody is going to do that. Even if they did, they're looking into these people under the assumption that there is something to find; everything is going to look suspicious in a way it never would have without that framing.

The question isn't whether a blocklist can be made with good intentions and due diligence; the question is whether it can be made with ill intent or sloppy execution, whether anyone can tell the difference, how likely they are to actually check, what you're doing with that list, and what impact your choices have.

If I make a list, the message I send is, "you can trust me. I did the research, I did it right, and this is a Good Blocklist. If you trust me, you should trust this list."

If I reblog a blocklist, the message I send is, "I trust this list. I may have even checked it myself. This is a Good Blocklist. If you trust me, you should trust this list."

The majority of the people who follow me probably believe they can trust me to some extent; oftentimes, people just trust that whatever is on their dashboard is trustworthy, because someone they follow put it there. Those are their friends, and their friends are trustworthy!

This should make you nervous. You should not be comfortable with this. People make mistakes all the time, and even if they did do the research (it's so much more likely that they did not, especially if they're not the original creator), someone else's standards of what kind of person "deserves" to be on a list like that are very likely different from your's. Are you going to double check every single name on that list yourself?

Well, if the accusation is bad enough, probably not. Especially if the accusation is something like "Nazi" or "TERF". And if you do start checking, how likely are you to check every single name? If the first 3 or 5 seem to check out, will you bother with the other 50 on the list?

What if OP hid someone in that list who doesn't belong there; someone they just have a personal grudge against? What if OP defines "TERF" to mean "anyone I assume doesn't think trans women are the most oppressed", and after the first 15 actual TERFs, the list is just a bunch of transmascs- many of whom don't even disagree with OP in the first place? What if they define "TERF" to include anyone who has ever been a TERF, and one of the people on that list is a trans person that has been rumored- without any foundation or grain of truth whatsoever- to have once been a TERF?

Will you know? Will you check? Even if someone you trust reblogs it? Even if someone you trust made it?

A blocklist may not have the same kind of obviously punitive intent as a callout post does, but it's a tool from the same toolbox. People think callout posts are about "safety", too. Lots of people also think that about the criminal justice system, about prisons, about the death penalty.

The question is not whether that could be true, or whether there could be a world in which justice is administered correctly with these tools. The question is whether it could fail, and who it hurts when it does.

Who can abuse this system? How easy is it to do so? Who is most likely to be hurt; is it the intended target, or people who are already disempowered by our systems and society?

What is the best way to go about this?

Even done correctly, a blocklist is not the most effective tool here: people can remake their blogs, change urls, and often have sockpuppets ready to go anyway. The list is rendered useless and inert as soon as enough people change their strategies to evade it. A more effective tool is education; teaching people how to recognize a TERF, or TERF ideology, on their own. Teaching them why those ideas are problematic. Encouraging them to block and disengage, and teaching them why engaging is harmful and counterproductive. Talking about de-radicalization, cult recruitment and radicalization tactics, and how to fight this epidemic.

Telling people what to think does not solve the problem, but teaching them how to be critical might.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

The most salient point to me in all this is that he used an unnamed ID app to try to figure out what mushrooms he found because he thought "Man those look good." The app misidentified the mushrooms as edible puffballs, but in reality they were destroying angels (Amanita ocreata). One is enough to kill an adult, and this person ate four of them. He's very, very lucky to be alive.

This is far from the first time someone put their entire faith in a single app to tell them what mushroom they were looking at, and then they paid the price with their health. You're going to hear me say this again and again: never, ever, ever use an app as your only tool for identifying anything, especially if you're planning to eat it. An app can be useful in conjunction with other tools like books, websites, online foraging groups, etc. But apps are frequently wrong, and are not the easy answer many people seem to want them to be.

(Rant about foraging below the cut.)

This right here is why I spend a decent amount of time in my foraging classes trying to scare the hell out of my students. I want them to understand the risks, not just as a brief aside, but as anecdotes I've collected from the news over the years like this one. I have had more than one person say afterward "Wow, I had a really romanticized view of foraging, and now I'm going to be more careful." That's a clue to me that I've done my job.

It's why my classes are SO focused on identification skills and tools to make you a more informed and careful forager. I am not going to just spend a bunch of time showing you slides of all sorts of edible species, with a little bit of information on how to identify and collect them tucked in before or after. Yes, we do look at some beginner-friendly species near the end of the class, but if all you want to get out of a foraging class is names and pictures of edible plants or fungi, that's what field guides are for. I spend the bulk of the time doing my absolute best to make sure people are PREPARED to go out and use their observational and critical thinking skills when assessing a new-to-them species, to include making use of many different types of resource, not just a single app.

I have literally had people complain that we spent too much time on "boring" stuff, and not enough on the edible species themselves---aaaaaand I don't care. My goal is to try as hard as I can to make sure incidents like the article above don't happen in the first place, which is going to take more than a couple of hours of looking at pretty pictures of mushrooms. Sure, sometimes all you get is a night of bad indigestion, but if you get one of the really nasty species full of amatoxins, you can die. Or end up with permanent liver and/or kidney damage. Or need an organ transplant.

And yes, as I said, you will get information on some species that I think are relatively beginner-friendly because they're distinctive AND they don't have any really serious poisonous lookalikes. But puffballs aren't on that list, and this article is a perfect example of why.

[ahgasegotarmy116]

Falling Part Five | Jeon Jungkook

Summary: Jae tells Lana about the party but you get nervous, not knowing what his intentions with her might be... Pairing: Guardian Angel f!reader x Fallen Angel Jungkook Word Count: 1.5k (sorry I know it's short and horribly edited) a/n: Hey guys so I know I haven't updated this story in months and a few of you have been asking for it so I'm sorry about that. I know this is short but I wanted to put something out for you guys. I'm still stuck on figuring out what's going to happen at the party so that's why this is still a little short but hopefully I'll figure it out and post it soon! Thanks for waiting 💜 Start from the beginning

"Jimin I don't know what to do" I whine, dragging out the last word, "I've been able to avoid the headache of her going to any high school parties but of course when this tall, mysterious, intelligent guy and his friends come around she suddenly decides to go" I complain to him. 

"I mean to be honest I don't blame her. They seem like they're fun and Jae is charming and to be honest out of the lot he's definitely a lot more her speed. I feel like that's why they work so well together" he responds, trying to get me to calm down a bit which helps but I still don't know how I'm going to help her. 

"Maybe you're right. He does seem like a really nice guy and he hasn't done anything wrong. I think just the fact that this is the first guy she's actually shown interest in is making me a bit more nervous" I admit, plopping down on Lana's bed while she continues to study. 

They've known each other for a few weeks and he hasn't shown any signs of really wanting to lead her astray so that's promising. At this point though I don't really know what he does when he's around Jungkook which stresses me out at the very least knowing that Jae has messed up enough to trade his guardian angel for a fallen one. 

"Just keep a close watch and maybe then he'll show his true colors. Lana sounds like a smart girl and you'll be materializing in a few weeks right?" Jimin reminds me. "That's only if she doesn't start to stray and I'm afraid that if she goes to this party that it'll be the beginning of the end for us" I voice, letting all of my worries and doubts out. 

"Just keep praying that she'll stay strong and that she'll focus on staying on the straight and narrow" he say, making it sound easy. "I wish it was that simple" I mumble, turning my head to look at her while she picks up her phone to no doubt, text Jae back from the looks of it. 

"You've been with her since she was conceived and you know her better than anyone. Just put your faith in her and I'm sure you'll make it to materialization. You've done a great job watching over her so, don't doubt yourself" he encourages. 

"I'm sorry but I have to get going now. Let me know how everything turns out alright?" he say before ending the call. "Yes don't worry I will" I reassure him and say our goodbye right as Lana's phone starts to ring.

"Hey!" she greets excitedly, instantly letting me know who it is without even trying, accompanied by the feeling of butterflies in her stomach. 

"I miss you" he says and I instantly gag while she has the polar opposite reaction watching as her cheeks start to warm up. "I miss you too" she says softly. "I wanted to tell you the details of the party tomorrow and also I just wanted to hear your voice" he admits.  

'Could he be any cheesier?' of course Lana is eating it up though. Chances are he's gonna be her first love so I guess I'll just have to get used to this lovey dovey behavior from them. I drown their conversation out, still listening in but only enough to sense if something bad will happen but it's pretty innocent at this point thank God. 

Thinking about all this love stuff is taking me back to when I was young and falling in love with Jungkook...

Eons ago...  

"Go talk to her" Jimin says, elbowing Jungkook in the side and he groans at the contact still with his eyes fully trained on me. 

"She's probably already with someone else" he says, making excuses and tries to walk away but his friend grabs him by his shoulders and turns him around, making him face me again

"She doesn't have a bracelet yet" he points out, looking at my wrists, neither of them adorned with and sort of jewelry. "Just go talk to her" Jimin repeats, pushing on his shoulder and making him stumble, grabbing my attention. 

Jungkook and I make eye contact for a second and he smiles bashfully and I return it before going back to my conversation with a few other female angels. 

"Look he's coming over here!" one of them says once I've turned back towards the group giving the handsome angle my back making me straighten out my wings from their slouched position into a more graceful one. 

"He's probably looking at one of you guys" I say in a hushed tone, all of them having clocked the way he was looking at me, leaving me feeling insecure and pushing away the thoughts that someone as handsome as him would be interested in a lowly angel like myself. 

I hear a man clear his throat behind me and my body goes rigid praying it's not who I think it is having truly thought my friends had been teasing me. 

They all make eyes at me, wordlessly telling me to turn around but when I don't he chances speaking to me to get my attention. 

"Hello" is all he says and the smooth baritone of his voice is more heavenly than any other melody I'd ever heard. "Hi, um we've actually gotta go" one of older angels says and pushes the other girls to the side, herding them over somewhere else and my protests die in my throat once he tries his luck again. 

"I haven't seen you around here before" he says and at that I turn around to face him. My breath is taken away from seeing him up close, his features working in perfect harmony. 

"Um yeah I'm one of the new borns, I guess" I say, still unsure of how everything works around here, referring to my recently aged up status. "Oh, well it's very nice to meet you..." he trails off waiting for me to fill in the blank. "Y/n!" I say quickly, embarrassed to have left a longer gap between his question and my answer. 

"That's a beautiful name" he says, testing how my name sounds on his lips. I swear I never want anyone to address me by my name ever again unless it's by him or God. "Oh and you are?" I question, forgetting to return his interest. 

"Jungkook" he says, a name that I had never heard before but pray would be one I would utter again and again. "It's nice to meet you Jungkook" and I can see how his eyes light up and his wings slightly raise behind him, obviously happy to have heard his name from my lips as well. 

And from that moment onwards we started falling. Madly, deeply and hopelessly in love. That is, until he fell...

"JK said the party starts around 8 so I can pick you up around that time if you'd like" I hear Jae's voice say through the speaker. "Oh okay, yeah that works!" Lana says but she sounds a bit wary. 

"What's wrong?" Jae asks, clocking her change in demeanor. "It's just that my curfew is 10 so I wont be able to stay for very long and because you're the one JK's throwing the party for I wouldn't want you to have to deal with leaving early to take me home or anything" she says and he nods his head, thinking for a second. 

"What about this. Why don't we just go and hang out there for like an hour and then we'll leave and spend the rest of that time together on our own before your curfew" he suggests and she lights up at the idea. "I'd like that" she smiles shyly, a fluttery feeling in her stomach again, no doubt from the thought of spending true alone time with him for the first time.

"You sure you want to miss out on the party?" Lana questions, starting to feel guilty about it all. "The party is gonna go on all night so if I feel up to it I can always go back later on. You're the only one I really want to spend time with" he admits and again I can't help but roll my eyes. 

At least he's honest though but I really hope this night ends with a simple goodnight kiss. 'Please Jae for the love of God don't pressure Lana into losing her innocence' I offer as a silent plea. 

Lana is someone I've been entrusted to and I will do everything in my power to make sure that she stays safe. One boy is not gonna ruin this for her, she's stronger than this and I know that. I just need to keep reminding myself and stop doubting her. 

I've gotta put my faith in her just like Jimin said, and pray to God Jae's intentions are pure. Please Jungkook, don't encourage him to do this, I know it's your sole purpose to lead him astray, but please, not Lana...

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[jacks347]

I MISSED THE NEW BVZ PREMIERE (THANKS JOB)

So now y'all get my live reaction! (I've never done one of these before, this is gonna be fun)

SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED IT

Intro is great as always, I love this song so much

Here we go~

WHO?? WHAT??

OFF TO A STRONG START

"Lack of cooperation" My guy it's Albus, that's literally his entire thing

On your family?? YOU LEAVE FAITH OUT OF THIS (and Kerano and Devlin)

OH??

HI DEVLIN WHAT

That design is so good, Glowbat you wonder

Plot twist #1, I expect many more

We're not even 5 minutes in, this post is going to be a fucking Bible-

Does Devlin have freckles?? Did he always have freckles?? Beautiful

Oh Devlin got sassy during the break I like :P

Of course he calls for his brother, the strongest person he knows how sweet <3

Miracle of faith, in more ways than one

Oo, that sounds painful

~DINNER BREAK~

ALBUS! LANGUAGE!

Ooo scary protective Albus

"My brothers. My battalion." Oh-

Aaaaand there's the Albus we know and love XD

"Fuck you and your hat!" Pfft you leave Devlin's fedora alone XD

Oh, back to our regularly scheduled program

Waiter I'm afraid you got some capitalism in my cowboy fantasy

GIMME CROSSBOW I WANT A CROSSBOW

I don't even think Albus knows where Albus went, he just heard his brother calling and left

Ewwwww TMI Albus

LIGHTSABER?? WHO LET ALBUS PICK UP A LIGHTSABER

Oo who's at the door? And why do I not trust it-

Oh it's just Devlin-

Uh oh, Albus has to explain his family~

Hi Mahatma! I still don't entirely trust you!

Why am I playing organizing Tetris-

...oops

"Can I ask you something?" I mean you just did so-

"Do you ever feel...powerless?" Well ain't this a pleasant conversation

"Like you can't save the people you care about" WELL AIN'T THIS A PLEASANT CONVERSATION

Look at Hipswitch showing off his detective skills! I'm so proud

Oh? What's on that ship??

Oh god not more new characters-

The mafia's back that's not good-

Why is the mafia fighting the Triad I'M SCARED

THE MAFIA SHOT DOWN THE PALADIN SHIPS?? WHY?? I DON'T LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING

Another point to the man that can't even fuckin read that he's just a tad bit stupid :P

Boys, boys! You're both pretty stop yelling XD

"Interesting" is certainly a word for it Doc, wait until you hear about the woman they're both in love with-

"Caused any distress" ...do you hear yourself Devlin?

...awkward silence...

Paladins of Cindergorn eh? Looks like we are gonna learn about Faith today

Devlin being a smartypants, Hipswitch giving the most sass I've ever heard in a single sentence, this is great

Ewww I hated everything about that metaphor

"Something doesn't feel quite right" Of course it doesn't because nothing here is ever simple

WHY IS DEVLIN CHANGING COLORS??

"Is there anything else you can actually swallow?" ...Doc that is the wrong person to ask

"Oh...eugh" 10/10 Love that reaction XD

Poor Devlin, he spent enough time single-handedly running a ship-

When did Albus attempt to learn to cook?? And why??

"Don't worry about me" Faith's healer senses are tingling

"I saw you get goosebumps, did I scare you?" Honey considering how this story is going I don't think it was fear-

HIPSWITCH THIS IS NOT THE POSITION YOU WANT TO BE IN WHEN DEVLIN GETS BACK

Oh the secondhand embarrassment is crawling up my spine and it hasn't even happened yet

Please God get off of him before I explode-

And we're safe thank god

"You don't trust him at all, do you?" Would you if you were in my position?

This is really just the backstory episode isn't it

Albus, the hired gun where his last job got him killed, wasn't too keen on being a bounty hunter until he saw the paycheck. Okay that stings a little-

"I'm sure they're fine" *Cut to them being very not fine*

Devlin proudly proclaiming he can't read, 10/10 tension diffused

"We won't tell a soul, right partner?" Sir I couldn't even if I wanted to my mouth is literally just for decoration at this point (don't take that out of context-)

Destroy a sacred scripture surrounded by Paladins of Cindergorn, a certain priestess just felt her eye twitch

Yes Doc, show off that psychology degree you worked so hard for (hi I'm a psych student so it's also the degree *I'm* working so hard for)

"Is Devlin a father?" He's not just a stepdad, he's a dad who stepped up 💪 (that was so bad forgive me-)

Devlin...what did you do...

Okay I do not trust any of what just happened, what are you after Devlin?

Oh god the mafia's back

DOGS?? OH GOD PLEASE NO

NOT DOC!! ALBUS SOUNDS SO WORRIED

Show em what you're made of Albus

Don't talk to Albus like he doesn't know what being trained from birth to be someone's dog is like-

Devlin's going through it again, someone save the poor boy from his flashbacks

Y'know, Redacted being the one getting killed instead of doing the killing is rather cathartic in a bittersweet kind of way

Time to rewrite history! Again!

"What exactly can he do?" Great question, I'll tell you when I find out

Oh great, GB's back on his villain shit what piece of lore are we getting today

I don't trust that music, what's about to happen and is it a sand worm like this is Star Wars (we already had a lightsaber it wouldn't shock me)

I KNEW IT!! ASK ME HOW I KNEW GO ON ASK

WHO IS THE MAN IN THE MASK I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS

"I have someone for this kind of thing" Yes go visit your wife and her special bandage technique :D

"Is it a hooker?" "No! It's not a hooker!" He sounded so offended for her, I love that

:O Let someone else fix you up?? And betray wife?? Wait no Wife is Gienne (hello GB Twitch chat :P)

Where's Faith I saw the cast list where is she

WHAT DO YOU WANT YOU BIRD NOSE FREAK

:D KERANO BABY

Oh that art is adorable

SHE CALLS HIM DAD MY HEART IS GONNA EXPLODE

Oop there's Faith-

And Kerano calls her Mom ughhhhh I'm not gonna make it y'all

"It's been x amount of time" Kerano I love you

"Death is too good for him" Yikes

"That's a relief!" "It is?" Pfft-

Faith went from furious to worried in 2 seconds hearing about Albus, that's our girl

"You didn't tell him about your father's death" HEH?? HONEY YOU DIDN'T TELL *ME* ABOUT HIS FATHER'S DEATH WTF I THOUGHT WE WERE IN THIS TOGETHER FAITH

Oh poor Devlin :(

"I miss him, Faith" Is that the first time we've ever heard Devlin call her by her name? Back in BW he always just called her Sister

Awww hug him for me Faith

Oh yeah, Faith is the only who can actually read-

"Something called Operation Sub Delta" ...what

Oh my god don't read it Faith please god don't read it

And she's reading it-

"You just want an excuse to see him again" Oh look, he's reading the thoughts of the fandom (YES WE WANT ALBUS TO SEE HIS WIFE AGAIN SO SUE US)

"I've actually met someone" EXCUSE ME?? DEVLIN YOU HOE WHO IS IT??

"Look at my choice in men" Ah so she realizes it XD

Come on Faith, connect the dots, I know you're smart enough

And she's done it

Who is Agent and what the hell is happening

Uh oh-

They have the files of the subjects that Devlin doesn't

Which means they can use Albus like their own weapon by probing his training like Kravatas did

Oh I really don't like where this is going

WHAT??

THAT'S THE END??

YOU CAN'T JUST END IT ON THAT WHAT THE HELL

Oh my god this series really loves throwing me for loops doesn't it

OKAY ENDING THOUGHTS

Absolute 100000/10 episode GB you madlad you've done it again

Was completely worth the wait, love seeing the whole cast together again including our new players!

The art is flawless, I expected nothing less of Glowbat

Keep doing what you do you mad genius GB, I'll be holding my breath for the next one (try not to kill me I can't do another 4 months-)

[that-one-kiddo-in-the-back]

Star Wars needs more silliness... because the jokes are good enough.

Once again, if you don't know, I'm what Lily would refer to as a Star Wars weeb. I live breath and shit Star Wars. You got it good. Let's dig in.

Not even a minute in before Lily starts complaining about how Star Wars is diving deeper into the lore of how the galaxy works. Even though she says she likes Star Wars, I never understood people who say they like something but don't want to know more about said thing.

She brings up that all the characters in the new Star Wars are basically the same character from older movies, which is kinda true, but that's also taking away the characters' motivation and story line she's uses Rey as an example saying "what if Anakin was a girl and a big dork." Which is kinda cute but completely ignores the fact that Rey and Anakin are nothing alike.

Now, I do agree with how Rey is a pretty refreshing character (and her video was made before TROS), but she's not as refreshing as she thinks Rey is. She even hit us with the "she's not like other girls," saying, "There is no mystery behind her origins. She wasn't linked to any characters of the past movie/books. She's just a force sensitive person who happened to get caught up in the war by circumstances." But then goes onto saying that no one liked that and that everyone wanted another, Luke. I am your father (which she called stupid)

She goes on a tangent about her complaints about TROS, which is valid. The last Star Wars movie was a big disappointment to anyone who liked the sequel. (I didn't like the sequels because I thought Finn would have made a better main character and the idea of a fascist soldier who was born into the army, learning that he was on the wrong side and worked to make up for his sins more interesting, also for what they did to Luke, Leia, Han, and everyone else from the original.)

After that, she brings up that everyone called Rey a Mary Sue, which is also dumb. She brings up the fact that Rey's force sensitive and uses Luke, Anakin, and Revan as examples of being overpowered, saying Luke had perfect had and Anakin had the reflexes of a god (idk much about Revahn so I'm skipping him) then mocks the people who cried over Rey not having any lightsaber training. But Luke and Anakin already had training in their own way. In the novelization of a new hope and even in the movie, it's stated that Luke would use wamp rats for target practice. Anakin was a slave who was bullied and probably beaten a lot, so he had to train himself to react faster. Anyone who's even been in a situation where you can't fight back will know that dodging and getting fast reflexes will help make sure you don't get hurt. Now, she uses her examples to explain that Rey would be able to beat Kylo in a fight because he's just a wimp. The nephew of Luke, who has been trained in the ways of the force since he was a child, is labeled as wimp. Technically speaking by Lily’s own logic, Kylo would have killed Rey in their first fight.

Okay, for those of you who care, I kinda write the blog post while watching the video, so I'm not even halfway done with this bullshit and I've already written 5 paragraphs of her video and she has yet to bring up why star wars needs more silliness... on to 6.

She then states that despite all her complaints about the movies (because she doesn't want to sound like a naiz), she really loves Rey and how... (this pissed me the fuck off) it brought life into Luke, Han, and Leia saying they were dull as crap. BITCH! I fucking love the original gang (they were my bi awakening) and when I heard they were bringing back the characters for the sequels I was very hesitant and I was right to be. The sequels did the gang so dirty, making Luke (the one who wanted to save his father, the man that chopped off his hand and killed millions of people and Jedi because he still had faith that his father was in there.) A mad man who tried to kill nephew because he had a scary dream of going to the dark side. They made Han (a badass who is a loving father and husband) a fucking deadbeat who lives in his van with his best friend. And they didn’t do shit for Leia she's not her sassy self or anything. She's just there for fan service.

She gets to her main problem with Star Wars saying, "They just rehash the same plot but with different seasoning. They all follow the exact same story: plucky underdog, every man rebels fighting against the evil empire." But the thing is that while sure Star Wars is just the same story over and over, it's the characters that I think is what makes it feel like it's something new. Seeing how different characters react to certain things. Luke wanted to be more than a farmer with fate, helping him become one of the strongest Jedi. Ezra only focused on keeping himself alive and not caring about anyone else to then becoming a strong leader with willing to risk his life for others. You aren't watching the same story with the copy and paste characters. You are seeing characters in the same situation dealing with it differently.

At the end of the video, she talks about her shity Star Wars fanfic and how that's how she would have written the sequels, which now that I realize what she had in mind with writing it explains why it's so fucking boring. why in the only 3 chapters I had read, nothing had happened. Thank god no one with a brain would ever leave her in charge of anything.

And of course, she can't make a video without insulting people for having a different definition of fun than her. Lily, for most people in the Star Wars exploring the lore and wondering how the rebels got the death star plans is fun for them, and most of us want to branch out from the force users to see how people in the galaxy deal with the empire. You know world building something Lily isn't good at.

Okay, this video really hurt to watch, and I completely hated it, and she didn't even explain why Star Wars needs more silliness she's just complaining about Star Wars even though she claims to love it.