#in those kinds of metas and theory-analysis in the first place

[jacksmusesdrv3]

Anyway

[novantinuum]

Pink Onyx AU- An Analysis and Theory Post, Part 1

[Part 1- You are here!] | [Part 2] | [Part 3] | [Part 4] | [Part 5]

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Howdy! Those of you who have followed me for a while have probably been seeing my reblogs of the @pink-onyx-au comic made by @ceephorsshitshow. Well, today I wanna share with you something a little different than my usual SU meta… because today I’m gonna analyze this really cool fan work with the same level of seriousness as I do canon. (Like. Seriously. This first post alone is really, really long. I put most of it under a cut.)

This particular comic is a very special one for me to watch unfold, because it’s evident that a lot of deep care and attention to detail has been poured into its creation. There’s fascinating bits of expanded character development to chew into here, as well as plenty of mysteries and lingering questions for us readers to muse and theorize over. If you follow me for Steven Universe and haven’t read this AU yet I highly recommend you check it out. The most basic pitch is that it explores what a fusion between Steven and Jasper might look like, and does a LOT of deep-diving into the similarities and differences of both of those characters’ psyches.

Here’s the episode masterpost on tumblr.

And you can find it on Tapas, too! 

(Note: For the purposes of these posts, I was given permission by the comic artist to post screenshots of various pages where relevant in this discussion. For each frame used I will list the episode and page number for easy reference. Additionally, this post and all future ones on the topic will contain full spoilers for the comic thus far.)

Now with all that introductory stuff out of the way, here we go!

__

So, on the final page of the most recent update, we get one hell of a visual plot bomb for Steven as ol’ Onyx unfuses:

(Episode 9: Page 22)

He’s now visually expressing remnants of his corruption, where before he was not.

And it’s this mysterious plot point in particular that got me wanting to analyze this comic more deeply in the first place. This is completely new for him in this story. Thus far, he’s never expressed any of these remnants when he’s just himself- not in the way Jasper does. So it made me wonder… how might this shift in his appearance play into the ultimate trajectory of the plot? How does Steven suddenly showcasing corruption scars integrate into the larger story that is being spun here about him and Jasper and how they relate to each other?

Well, there’s a lot of comic details and story lore we need to unpack first before I can take my best theorizer’s stab at this. Let’s dig right in.

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Prelude: The analyst’s treasure is in the speech bubbles

Anyone who’s been a fan of this comic for a while has probably noticed these fun visual details already, but I’m going to take a moment to break down what I believe each speech bubble style signifies for folks who may not have context. It’ll make some of my analysis later a bit easier, too, ahah.

So. Speech bubbles. What kinds do we have here? 

(Episode 1: Page 6)

Style number one: Solid with black text

This style is standard for non-fused characters, and is also utilized when a fused character is speaking whilst in a state of internal harmony.

Steven is pink and Jasper is orange, of course. Onyx’s speech bubbles are a distinct darker pink, and the main three Crystal Gems get their own colors as well. More minor characters get white bubbles.

(Episode 1: Page 10)

Style number two: Scribbly pink lettering overlaying black text

Whenever you see this type of speech bubble, it’s a sign that there is some level of internal discord going on within Steven or Onyx that is related to their diamond side. It usually shows up when one of the two is in pink mode, but from what I can tell this is not a solid rule.

(Episode 2: Page 12)

Style number three: Pink/orange mixed bubbles

This is how we see Onyx talking for a good portion of the early comic. Their speech bubbles are a clean mix of Steven’s pink and Jasper’s orange. And most vitally, the color on the top and the tail signifies which of them is “fronting” at that moment.

(Episode 3: Page 11)

Style number four: White bubble with solid pink text

So far, this style has only been used to represent dialogue that is being spoken by Steven’s gem half exclusively. Which makes things very interesting, as in Steven’s own remembrances of shattering Jasper on the very first page of the comic, the line “I have been holding back!” is shown in this specific style, instead of the scribbly pink lettering that signifies internal discord.

There is one additional sub-style here- and this is the one moment where we get Onyx’s mixed bubble but WITH the solid pink text. 

(Episode 3: Page 11)

I believe these two styles pretty much mean the same thing… only, the white/pink text is either viewed within memory or a metaphoric fusion mindscape where we the viewer are actually “seeing” Steven’s instability, and thus can “see” his gem half as a separate entity there. While, in reality, this is an argument Onyx is having with the disparate pieces of themself.

(Episode 4: Page 9)

Style number five: Pink/orange tye-dye mixed bubbles

When you see that darker shade of pink start dappling into the standard mixed bubbles, this indicates that there are small whispers of Onyx’s true personality beginning to surface, instead of them constantly being wrested back and forth between Steven and Jasper’s conscious control.

(Episode 4: Page 16)

Style number six: Pink/orange mixed bubbles, but with a darker pink tail

From this page onwards, Onyx’s speech bubbles always have their darker pink shading the tail no matter who is fronting. Sometimes there are little lines of another color etched out of it, and sometimes the tail is solid dark pink. I like to believe that when it’s solid, it means that Onyx is just a little closer to reaching a fully harmonious state than when it’s not.

(Episode 9: Page 6)

Style number seven: Onyx speech/thought bubbles with a hint of pink/orange underlying

This style seems to signify moments where it’s still Onyx fully in control of themself and their actions/words/thoughts, but they’re taking subtle influence from their components or accessing their memory a bit.

These are all of the distinct styles I have caught so far, but quite honestly, it would not surprise me if I am missing something. All of this to say… pay close attention to the speech bubbles. They can tell you a lot about Onyx’s state of mind throughout the story.

Now with all this established, I’d like to finish off this first post with my first big discussion point.

__

Question One: What does Jasper actually know about Steven’s “meltdown,” if anything?

The AU author recently solidified this comic’s placement in the SUF timeline in an ask response, saying that the first episode takes place just a week after Steven’s corruption event.

I’m glad this point was clarified, because it was super vital information which deeply influenced the way I analyzed Steven’s actions and responses in my recent re-read… it means this experience is still super raw for him. This is VERY important and we’ll get back to this in more depth later in future posts. But first, let’s explore what Jasper knows of this event.

The full extent of her knowledge is unclear-

(Episode 1: Page 6)

In Episode 1, Steven briefly alludes to his corruption as seen above… referring to it as “[his] meltdown.” Notably, Jasper does not seem to ask any questions about this stray comment. This COULD suggest that she knows what happened to him a week prior via hearsay, but given the context of the rest of the scene and the fact that she’s as isolated as she is out here I genuinely wonder if she thinks Steven’s so-described “meltdown” is his shattering of her.

This idea would make a good deal of sense, as she doesn’t start to make any commentary on the topic of corruption at all until they’re actually fused- with Steven bringing it up first.

(Episode 2: Page 14)

On this page, Steven takes note of Onyx’s very visible spikes (which are Overtly in the same placement as his own when he was corrupted), and initiates the musing upon his own corruption himself.

With the way Jasper phrases her response, the vibe I get is that she somehow gleans a bit of ambient shared knowledge about what happened to him through their fusion.

(Episode 2: Page 15) 

“That human form you wear must have been hiding your markings.” This quote is SUPER vital. We’ll come back to this later on in this post series, too.

(Episode 2: Page 15)

It’s clear that Jasper doesn’t REALLY understand what he went through or what caused it, since she then outright mistakes the casual woes and body pains of organic life as corruption. (As seen above.) 

(Episode 8: Page 4)

But later on, she outright relates to him over their shared experience of past corruption, so she must at least know enough from mere ambient thought-sharing by this point to recognize it happened.  

It’s obvious that she’s barely scratched the surface on fully understanding her fusion partner, though. Neither of them have. It’s gonna take a lot of fusion, comedic mishaps, and genuine conversation to get there. All in good time, I’m sure.

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Please do join me tomorrow at 7am PST for the next post in this series! This has been a blast to write up and muse upon.

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

Top 10 Things I Love About the QL Tumblr Community 2023

I'm loving everyone's end of year lists, and decided to make up one of my own.

I haven't been on Tumblr for very long and was originally just lurking. 2023 marks the year where I finally started posting, after I read a take that made me feel compelled to come to a fictional character's defense. (Saengtai, my poor little blorbo).

So in commemoration of my first proper year of active tumblring, I present what I love about this community (in no particular order).

(Side note - Technically I know this is still primarily a BL community, but I like to say QL because I am trying to manifest more lesbians for us.)

1) The Gifmakers

Y'all are a good 70% of the reason I joined Tumblr in the first place. There are so many show moments that I want to relive, but without having to search through videos. Sometimes I want to appreciate the aesthetics. Sometimes I want to remember adorable or goofy moments. Sometimes I just want to see cute boys eating each other's faces. Our gifmakers give all of that to us, with the addition of so much creativity and style.

There's too many amazing ones to mention everyone, but I have to shout out @sparklyeyedhimbo, because the way your brain works makes me so happy.

2) The expertise

The other part of why I joined Tumblr was to learn more about what BLs were out there and what I might be missing. And holy hell. Y'all are putting in the work. Not only lists and resources for finding all kinds of QLs, like these fabulous monthly breakdowns by @gunsatthaphan, but also amazing posts that add additional context, like @absolutebl's incredibly helpful breakdown of Asian honorifics. There is so much research people do, for fun! And then they share it!

3) The meta analysis

I frickin love reading people's takes and analyses on series. I love learning, I love seeing perspectives from people with different cultural backgrounds to my own, it's all so fascinating! There's so much context we can miss due to our own privileges, or lack of knowing about various cultures, or due to whatever bubbles we've been living in. People here are just so smart, and nuanced, and willing to reflect and think about things, and also push back at each other, but generally with respect (except when you call out the dumb shit you see, usually on Twitter or TikTok, where people are being reductive and dumb about gender and sexuality).

And I've seen a few takes where people complain about analyses, and say that the director/production doesn't do everything deliberately, and we're all reading too much into it. To which I say, eh, lighten up. How people connect to and relate to media has relevance beyond what was intended. The point is we get to think and discuss and learn and grow. That doesn't happen if we don't analyze.

Special shout out here to @respectthepetty because colors mean things!

4) The wild theories

The other side of the analysis coin, the clown cars y'all drive around in with the wildest of theories. I have happily climbed into an occasional clown car, and usually I am utterly wrong (*cough* Saifah *cough*). But it's a super fun ride. I love seeing how people's brains work. I love it when y'all are wrong. I love it when y'all are right. It's beautiful.

5) Immediate acceptance

I am one of those people who knows that I have a lot of good qualities, and also, always kind of expect rejection. Blame the childhood bullies, I guess. Anyway, whenever I delve into a new space, I still feel like a total dork that no one will want to talk to. It's kind of a fraught way to move through the world, but I manage.

Anyway, I started posting my thoughts as they came up, and people are just totally cool with it. People even follow me sometimes. Even my silliest thoughts and dumbest jokes get at least a couple likes. It's so validating.

And my very silly joke about gay mafia in Kiseki has over 800 likes. I feel very seen.

6) Mutuals

I still kind of can't believe I have any. This ties in to the dork feeling above, but seriously - they are soooo cooooool. They're smart and awesome and funny, and they somehow find me worth following back, which is baffling yet wonderful. I want to squish their faces and give them many kisses (if they're into that kind of thing).

7) The self-exploration

I really appreciate how it's become more talked about how a lot of people are discovering queerness through BL, because that is so the case for me. I think it's both that I was in a bit of a hetero bubble before, and also that I'm evolving a bit as I age. I had figured out I was demi, and maybe a little bit gay, before getting in to BL, but being in this community, and seeing so many of you share so openly and freely, has made me realize it might be more than a little bit.

Either it was a new realization, or being around y'all has made me more gay. Win win, either way.

8) The weirdness

I'm weird. Y'all are weird. I love it.

9) The thirst

So many in this community are thirsty as fuck, and as someone who is in that same condition, I love that it's not just me. There are not many places where I can freely admit how horny I am as a part of my general existence.

Here? I could post about wanting to lick some random BL actor's face, and it would get a bunch of likes and some tags like #lickable, and it's just not remotely a big deal.

Also the gifmakers understand this, and give us beautiful cuts of our spicy scenes. They are genuinely too good for us.

10) The communal watching experience

There is absolutely nothing like watching along with people in the community. It is so worth the torture of having to wait week to week for new episodes. Seeing the show trend, watching the theories fly fast and furious, or the way everyone collectively loses their minds over particular moments. In a world that can feel very isolating, it's a very warm experience.

So there you go. Thank you all for being you. Here's to another year of QL shenanigans and losing our collective minds!

[gentrychild]

O great Owl and thou noble fic-finding rats I come because I have failed to find that which I need.

There is a work, apart of your Anyone universe, where Izuku is writing a Quirk Analysis Paper and he wakes AfO up so he can see a mutation quirk which enlarges AfO's arm. I have combed through all of Anyone and then through your side works that take place in this universe. But I found nothing.

The only thing I can think is that it was a tumblr post or a fanfic one of your blog mates wrote for you. But alas, I am still here.

In exchange I swear that if my firstborn ever starts stealing quirks I will buy all the therapists, and if that fails I will leave him to your fic-finders with no rivers in sight. And they may nibble on him for all of forever.

With reverence and sincerity, -me

I have some bad news and good news for you. The bad news is that his is something I wrote and posted on Tumblr, and you will never find it again even if you scroll through the entire Anyone tag. The good news is that you must be especially lucky as I found it by pure luck in a file I had forgotten.

----------

Izuku, sitting on his bed, books and notebooks opened on all of its surface, clicked his pen. Once, twice, thrice, the sound echoing in the silent apartment without doing anything to bring the answer the teenager desperately needed.

Usually, deadlines weren’t a problem for him. For some obscure reasons, the teachers in his high school were trusting him no matter what he did and forging his mom’s signatures to excuse his many absences had become the routine. However, he needed to finish this paper for tomorrow morning, so Hebisuga could read it and save her grade in Meta Analysis. That way, she would stop worrying so much about this subject, focus back on her Japanese, and write once again her ridiculously good flash cards that she always accepted to share with Yuuto and him.

But right now… Izuku’s brain just wasn’t cooperating.

He got up, his back protesting as he stopped hunching over for the first time in a couple of hours, and he left his bedroom. His notebook in hand, he walked past the bathroom and knocked at the door of the master bedroom, currently invaded by the bane of his existence while his blissfully ignorant mother was away.

The door opened in the second, All for One appearing in front of him, his hair messy and his face showing the trace of the pillow but no sign of sleepiness. The villain was one of those persons who immediately passed from sleep to alertness while Izuku needed three cups of coffee to be semi-conscious.

“What is it?” the villain asked. “Did you-“

“Show me your mutation quirks, please. Preferably the one that can offer some kind of protection.”

“What makes you think that-“                                                                       

Izuku clicked his pen once again and just stared at the quirk-stealing-fiend.

All for One finally obliged, making his arm grow in size, muscles growing until it had gruesomely swollen up, and he even added some spear-like bones. Bewildered, he answered every questions Izuku had about the drawbacks, the weight, how much he could still move his arm, and so on.

Because if analyzing quirks was his passion and could become a job, words in a book didn’t mean anything to Izuku. He needed to ask questions, to make theories, to see them in action.

Once he was done and had all the elements he needed, he thanked All for One and walked back to his room without offering any explanation. But of course, his roommate didn’t need one.

“Did you just use me to finish your homework? At three AM?”

[vidavalor]

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does it mean to dance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Within that word, though? Is the word prop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is healthy as all fuck:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I really don't think he did...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is to dance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How did they get into the answering machine?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Omens is completely sending up this mindset.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the standpoint of this story?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*tilts head* hiiiii Crowley...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crowley, on the other hand?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, why did he?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you remember how Aziraphale phrased the idea to Crowley?

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's so damn cute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's what the dancing is all about.

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

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

[raayllum]

hey I have some thoughts and theories on season six that I want to post but I feel like they’re kind of in cohesive and all over the place and rambly and I’m not really sure the best way to get them across especially when I’m more of a brainstorm type of personof like 10 different ways something could go I’m not really sure how to organize it or make it comprehensible to the average Tumblr scroller do you have any tips for this? because I want them to get reach cause I do feel like I’m contributing something but sometimes I think what I’m saying makes no sense at all or no one’s going to read all that you know. or, TLDR: Do you have any tips on making meta in general since you seem to be the main producer of it in the fandom ha ha, your input would be invaluable

So I actually did start writing a post a while ago about well, a kind of how to guide for writing meta, but it felt very self-gratuitous so it got semi-banished to the drafts although I still might finish / clean it up and post it someday

That being said your ask does make me realize that your query is not something I had considered going over, approaching it from more of a "here's how to train your brain to notice things that can be fun to write meta about" > organizing said thoughts, so thank you for bringing it to my attention! I hope some of this advice will be useful, and it may even have some overlap with other thoughts I had planned

The most useful way I've found when it comes to meta is treating it like an essay, with an introduction, body paragraphs / sections (and sometimes headers), and a conclusion of some kind when warranted. This means looking for similarities or main ideas with possible consistent threads (i.e. avenues Aaravos' evil plans could go might be split off into branches, each one detailing a different avenue). So that would be my best advice when it comes to organization.

However, most concerns about "not making sense" comes down to thinking through what context you have to provide for your audience to understand what you're discussing, depending on the length and depth of the leap / analysis. Are there any symbols being drawn upon we will want to explain in more detail before theorizing how they relate to the show? Are there any smaller details or scene summaries to include when putting these things together?

For example, when I wrote a meta about Rayla being the metaphorical light to Callum's darkness (pre-S5), I first had to establish why I associated her with light, drawing from visual examples from S1, S2, and S4, as well as the "Dear Callum" letter. Callum's side of things was more straightforward with dialogue in the text. Then I could take it one step further and talk about why this light-dark duality indicates that she will likely save him from possession after possibly leading to the fall in the first place. But I had to go from a bottom-top approach in steadily building the layers rather than starting from the top and working my way down, as for more symbolic matters in particular, that can often be confusing.

Although sometimes more simplistic, consulting the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, and why) can likewise be useful in meta in terms of 1) tracing where certain ideas are coming from in the text, 2) what is being posited/suggested, and 3) why these things might be conflated, and 4) who might be involved. Obviously meta tends to be more "what" heavy, particularly when its predictive, but it's kinda like explaining why one character might be more involved in one plot line than another, etc. There's going to be a Why to that Who, and those things both combine to form the What (otherwise known as theory or just plain analysis).

And don't be concerned about if people are gonna wanna read it. I find most people in TDP fandom are pretty down to theorize even if they may not necessarily write a lot of it down themselves (and often have cool ideas/contributions too!) and I am the king of making things overly long, yet people muscle through anyway!

That's about it for me without more specifics (a character study vs foil vs theme vs prediction are all kinda different in their own way) but I would love to hear more if you'd like to message me off anon or if you have more thoughts/questions you'd like to leave in my inbox once that's opened back up! Have fun theorizing, have fun writing, always feel free to break longer metas up into smaller bite sized ones as you go, and I look forward to seeing them int the tags!

[prettyboykatsuki]

I don’t thing Toga is dead or Bkg. I think that they’re going to have this whole drawn out thing where OFA transfers to everyone (like the bkdk in heroes rising ((i think it’s heroes rising))) Anyway I think it’ll be like a redemption thing for everyone where they all like team up like when Izuku in the opening says ‘This is the story of how I became the greatest hero’ or wtv idk it’s something along those lines. Anyway. I think it’s about all of them coming together as one hero (sort of) but also I’m probably wrong bc I tend to over analyze (autism) idk if this is relevant to anything you are discussing so sorry. I am wading into the waters to perish goodbye

i agree with this to an extent actually... tho idk if everyone will receive it i do have some confidence that bakugou will receive or become apart of it(thinking about that Vague Ass Quote from hori always) since the movies became canonized i will once again be very surprised if him taking the mantle of ofa with izuku is not integral to the final arc. plus it alligns completely w bkgs character that he ends up once again being the very symbol of victory but i digress

to me theres no instance in which deku takes on the last fight on his own in the first place so i can see everyone becoming part of ofa and working together. kind of like the ending of naruto in that sense lmao. it will likely be all of class 1a putting everything they've got towards it (once theyve all finished their individual arcs) and then bkg saving deku for the first time or deku saving him one last time so ofa becoming apart of that equation isnt actually that far fetched to me. that being said im unsure if that means bkgs physical body will live forever. a meta account i rlly enjoy has several theories abt bkg beocming a vestige or part of ofa instead of dying and i can see that very well.

anyway. not abt bkg rn kjdfbjkd. but i dont think u are overanalyzing. i keep saying bnha is predictable and i really do think it is but i dont mean that negatively at all. many of the major choices it makes completely align within the stories logic so if anything can be predicted it can be possible as well. this doesn't feel all that far fetched to me esp given the name of the quirk is literally One For All LMAO. it would honestly make less sense for only izuku to have it? and it's a quirk thats strength compounds based on how many peoples powers it touches. like i dont think thats actually that far off fkdjk.

i cant say for sure tho!! i suck at theory crafting because my brain does not follow story logic super well. im good at character analysis ONLY. but i can see it at the very least which means its v possible.

[krispykroissant]

Original Content Writing (Week 6)

"How are you narrowing your account choices? Walk us through your process of selecting these - keep in mind, I don't want you to stop liking something you love because you spend 6 weeks researching it. So really pay attention to your process. Help us understand, and help yourself understand as practice for the reflections!"

I haven't started thinking about what specific pages I want to analyze yet. If I had to guess, knowing myself, I would probably look for (Instagram) pages that cover informative topics relating to music. I come across a lot of posts and a lot of pages dealing with music theory, tips and tricks for musicians at any stage (beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert, etc), and "fun facts" pages regarding music history and things of the sort. These kinds of pages are the ones that I often think of from a meta standpoint, where I try to think about how the creator comes up with the ideas for the posts, how they actually make the posts, and what they must be thinking to create the posts in the first place. It helps me understand that some content creators are focused on what they think their audience likes, while also forming their audience by introducing new concepts sprinkled in with their original stuff that brought their initial audience.

I'm sure that I will likely come across a handful of familiar accounts on my explore page (familiar in that I don't follow them but I see their posts frequently), and I will follow a select number of those pages so that I can see more of their posts. I will most likely save one or two of each page's posts into a bookmark/folder within Instagram so that I can come back to them later during the analysis.

I feel that this may be a good idea for me because the world of music is endless, and I won't become bored of my chosen pages because I will specifically look for pages I don't already follow. That way, instead of getting bored or sick and tired of a page I already knew, I can learn more about a page that I am only vaguely familiar with. It will feel less like overconsumption of my material of interest, and more like a regular amount of consumption of new material.

[ourmondobongo]

Hello! I'm new on tumblr :) I found your blog and came to love your interpretation on Levi's character ❤

I've recently come to notice that aside from many eruri shippers, there's also a vast majority of the fandom consider Levi as an obsessed revenge-seeker who doesn't give a flying crap about humanity in the final battle. I personally disagree with this idea and can't even bear the thought. Levi only proved to us in the final battle how much he cares. He was ready basically ready to put himself in danger anytime and almost forgot about the promise. But anyway the reason I'm here is because a few people and I were discussing this issue with a guy who keeps saying:

"1) He was just happened to be there in the final battle. He was there for Zeke and he made it clear in 126 that his intention is killing the beast titan to Magath and Pieck. No Zeke. No care"

"2) On the plane all he was thinking about was killing the monkey and it's not because it was Hanji's theory. He just wanted to kill tbe beast"

"3) Before getting onto the plane he didn't participate in battle but once he knew they were getting close to Eren's whereabouts, where Zeke probably was, he took part and don't tell me it was because he was recovering in those days while Hange and the other were fighting the Jaegerists. If we were to consider that then he needed rest till the very end of the series. He didn't need to take part in the battle"

"4) While flying on Falco he kept saying "Where is he? Where is the beast? And kept remembering Erwin's orders. Doesn't that sound like a simp to you?"

I'm sorry this turned out long but these horrible things are only parts of what he said. We tried arguing with him but well sometimes it's really hard to make someone understand lol What do you think about each of these 4 takes? I would love to read your thoughts and analysis. You sound like a very logical person.

Hello!!! 

Welcome to Tumblr!!!

Thank you for the kind words! I love Levi a lot!

And though I'm nowhere near as in depth or accurate as other snk metas writers who long live here, I try my best to at least one or two points here and there as best as I can!

Before we begin exploring your points, excuse me for a sec while I share a bit of a concern I have…

You know, I feel like these last volumes of snk had a strange pacing, which compromised the depiction of facts and how the characters were living the events. Because while many things are getting clear now, almost one year later, the fact that there were an incredibly lot of faithful and sincere readers feeling way off or confused about the end of snk isn't normal, imo. Veteran people here on Tumblr - who used to write very in depth analysis of snk! - were so disappointed they dropped out of the fandom, or wrote frustrating rants. I can’t help but feel like there is a communication gap begging to be fixed and crossed between Isym, the manga, and the readers (at least the non-Japanese ones?).

And besides the seemingly need for a less rushed pacing, be it for the lack of more accurate manga translations, or side material officially published (such the smartpasses and other guidebooks), or snk interviews published in a official place to be referenced easily, or WIT's badass-biased portrait of characters - there seems to be a little gap between what Yams had been trying to say and what was written and shown in the manga, imo. Not to mention all the wild push-and-pull between ships, yeagerist x alliance, "the ML is always right" x "the ML is a complete maniac incel", and whatevers...

So I think this is why the anime now seems to be adapting the chapters slower, more detailed, orderly in timeline, and kinda heavy, brutal, and more humanistic. Though at first I didn't want to see a snk movie for the end, I'm somewhat starting to like the idea - if this is for the anime to fill up and smooth out the convoluted transitions between what Isym managed to present in the manga and what he wanted to do but couldn't on the paper for whatever reason. I think it will be good for the general audience who will still stick to the conclusion!

Now, let's go to the points you brought up!!

"1) He was just happened to be there in the final battle. He was there for Zeke and he made it clear in 126 that his intention is killing the beast titan to Magath and Pieck. No Zeke. No care"

Sometimes I feel like the fandom kinda forgets that EMA are the MCs of snk. I've forgotten sometimes that as well ngl  

Levi certainly grew to become the most beloved and why not to say most important character of snk alongside Eren. But still, the main plot was not his history to resolve the final problems himself. The "hierarchy" is Eren-Mikasa-Armin, and then Levi. Or even, Levi's story was paralleled with Eren's. 

Regardless of this, most of the time I feel like people who claim Levi was just by chance/alive in the final battle are mostly arguing based on "death plot armor" and "Levi was nerfed so Mikasa could shine" ideas. And tbh, it kinda bothers me when I read people saying "Isym nerfed Levi because he was too OP and would have killed Zeke and Eren in a blink" and other typical shounen sayings because I don't think it was the case at all. 

While it's kinda controversial that Levi could fight on such horrible conditions considering that in the Female Arc he was put out of commission due to his injured feet, they were facing the end of the world now, and with barely anyone left to join the fight. But since my own view is but my own on the matter, I like to reference people to this interview here, in which pretty much Isym explains Levi wouldn't always be placed on the front lines by being too powerful. But rather than simply "nerf" him, this actually adds depth to Levi's character (as well to all other characters who had to put themselves together and face the danger). Levi's worried face and clenched fist in chapter 33 tells us how hard it was for him to stand by and only watch people having to fight while he can't...

...But this nuance is mostly lost because anime people usually pick the manga to read from where the anime season ended, and Thank you WIT for bringing Levi out of nowhere and making him save everyone's asses in the anime for the sake of fanservice - it helped to unnecessarily OP his character a lot!! (*sighs*)

(As a side note about Levi's injuries after 115, the drawings of Levi's chest and abs on 126, there weren't broken ribs or any other visibly serious injury, nor major problems aside from his face. I believe Hanji would have wrapped his abs with something to show it, or Yams would have made it bleed or purple or whatever. Levi definitely should have purple bruises since he fell hard on the ground, tho, but please MAPPA do NOT cover Levi's sexy back LOL)

And talking about chapter 126 - imo, it falls in the list of chapters that definitely should have been split into two different chapters. It feels kinda rushed, too much info packed into 45 pages, borderline cringe in some parts. Maybe it's why the aot leaks say the anime will have a whole episode dedicated just for it - they might flesh out the content to make the plot flow more smoothly.

But regarding Levi and Hanji’s talk with Magath and Pieck, something everyone should consider is that MagaPi didn't know LeviHan at all - just that they were highly capable soldiers and leaders of the Survey Corps. They were "sworn enemies", the ones who put into shame ALL their precious Titan Shifters. And as far as MagaPi knew, LeviHan were supposed to be cunning and merciless, vengeful "Island Devils" that had invaded Liberio and wreaked havoc, and killed military and civilians just a month ago; they had been secretly working with Zeke all the time.

So why would MagaPi believe our devoted hearts would want to save their deadly, hate-filled persecutors? And also after all the tragedies Marley itself had imposed on them? 

As humans and soldiers that had all the reasons to distrust one another, LeviHan presumably understood that MagaPi needed some solid goal or purpose besides the "we want to save the same people that want to kill us all!!!". If even readers mocked this idea, and Isym also kinda ironizes this in the "Avengers Pose" at the end of 126 as well as using Yelena to make critics over the superficiality/naivety of the thought of saving the world in 127, what makes anyone think this would simply work with LeviHan and MagaPi right of the bat? 

That's why they use Zeke as a credible link to instigate the start of a conversation.

I presume MagaPi were well aware of Levi and Zeke’s animosity. They might have deduced that Levi’s hurt predicament was due to a fight with Zeke too. I would like to point out, tho, that while Levi proposes the idea, Isym does a close up on Hanji, Magath, and Pieck's faces. Hanji's eye is hidden (meaning it's not simply this killing intention they had in mind), and Magath isn't buying it just yet too, and above all Pieck once again dislikes the idea of killing Zeke, just like in 119.

Their main interest definitely isn't aligned as of yet. But it was the best first step they could try out.

Thus, "No Zeke, no care" is but a heavily blindly obsessive-revenge interpretation of Levi's character. Thank you Kodansha for officially translating Hanji's words of vexing feelings as a need for revenge too 🙃 Levi's character was benefited by it (*sighs*).

As for Levi’s general feelings and thoughts in the final battle, I think chapter 136 couldn't be more explicit than that!

Levi is literally dropping his burden goal of killing Zeke because he is too injured to fight him (and it would bring more dangers to his kids if he died meaninglessly), 

and Levi is shoving up and scrubbing into our faces that the world he himself and the others hoped for when they decided to fight in the SC wasn't to destroy others (but thanks again, KodanshaTM, for changing WE DREAMT to YOU DREAMT 🙃👌), 

and when gripping his sword, Levi is showing he is renewing his will to not give up his dream and die succumb to the pressure of the horrors of the moment, and that he is gonna fight until his dying breath now - whether Zeke appears or not - while entrusting the future to the youth who held the same look of hopeful freedom he saw at the Heart of the SC. 

But, ofc, there comes Erwin's name after this all, and Levi expressing no regrets about having let him die, and near the eyes' sentence; and as the first KodanshaTM "you" wasn't translated as plural you, Levi's heartbreaking and multilayered monologue is read as him being a one-dimensional-soon-to-be-dead-vengeful-impaired-simp nerfed by Isym and that just wanted to fulfill a promise "to kill monkeyTM". 

At this point, I can only hope the animation can somehow save Levi's character now. Or maybe, Isym himself may give an interview which clarifies this all with his own words so people can settle this matter once and for all. I wonder what Japanese readers think of this whole crazy ordeal...

Lastly, Super-peace-fangirl has shown perfectly panel by panel how much Levi cared about snk final events especially on chapter 138, after Zeke's death. If Levi isn't clearly showing AGAIN that he is saving and caring and battling for humanity, I don't know what his character is doing anymore!!

"2) On the plane all he was thinking about was killing the monkey and it's not because it was Hanji's theory. He just wanted to kill the beast"

Being a bit bitter, I'm not even shocked over Hanji erasure here. 

Hanji’s treatment in this ending was… rushed and kinda unfair. And it doesn't help that Yams drew Hanji mentioning the Zeke hypothesis back in chapter 126, in a minuscule panel during a supposedly important conversation that made enemies worked together but that only lasted for 02 pages (*sighs*). 

Still, at least two key points are being forgotten when people argue that Levi is but "obsessively hunting down his prey" in chapter 133 and so on:   

The Characters don't have ORVP 

We, readers, have the omniscient reader viewpoint. The characters don't. So we readers might know whatever is going on inside the Founder and the extension of Zeke’s relationship with its power, but Levi and the others didn't know.

And when we read the scenes projecting our awareness upon the text and the characters actions, then we slip down on the problem of "Oh, this is so obvious!". Which ends up with us proceeding to read events and statements as a "broken record", which I feel that happens with Levi regarding Zeke (and the vow too). 

Hanji is the Biggest Titan Specialist of snk World 

Levi is one of the most sincere narrators of snk, even if sometimes he needs a translator.  

If he himself said "I'm not certain, but that was what Hanji predicted", then Levi (Professional Titan Killer, and not ORVP/reader/Yams) might not be 100% sure that killing Zeke will stop the Rumbling, but since Hanji (the Biggest Titan Specialist of their world, as even hinted by Pieck on 126) predicted as much, Levi was betting on it. To him, following Hanji's experience and knowledge of 10 years regarding Titan studies, killing Zeke has a great chance to stop it all. And if it spares Eren's life, then it's something even better. So Levi is not using lame excuses, or blind vengeful reasons, to go after Zeke. This, or Yams is fucking kidding with Hanji’s character. I can’t believe he would go so low as use this crap with Levi of all characters.

And I also want to highlight that no one else there but Armin and Levi could have thought of that idea. But it's quite logical Armin wouldn't be used in this because his dilemma over killing Eren had to last longer. At the same time, imo, this is Isym also showing that Levi was reluctant on killing Eren as much as everyone else. We can see it from 112, then his behavior in 133 in Paths, and then until chapter 137/138. Things are not simply one-dimensional-in their interpretation in AOT.

Another note, I want to highlight how broken Levi looks when mentioning that it was Hanji's idea, and then how he asks for everyone's cooperation and help later. If revenge is the 1st and only thing that comes into one's mind when seeing these panels - and not Levi heavily struggling to keep focused physically, mentally, and emotionally in the battle ahead because he is deeply injured, and has just become the last veteran, the last one carrying all the weight of thousands of devoted hearts on his back alone, and millions of people are dying because Eren and Zeke meet, and Levi just wants all that slaughter and pain and suffering to end - then...

I.don't.know. 

Levi's character is already a "I will kill monkey" meme by now. Curse it all lol

"3) Before getting onto the plane he didn't participate in battle but once he knew they were getting close to Eren's whereabouts, where Zeke probably was, he took part and don't tell me it was because he was recovering in those days while Hange and the other were fighting the Jaegerists. If we were to consider that then he needed rest till the very end of the series. He didn't need to take part in the battle"

They themselves answer their arguments while overlooking the obvious facts lol Way to purposely find reasons to shit on Levi's character. They must hate Levi for nothing lol

Well, in chapter 128-129, it has been 2 days since Levi nearly died in a thunderspear explosion. While us readers had to wait 10 - 12 months to read the chapters, to the characters it was 2 days! Levi is totally wrecked at that time, which is made even clearer at the beginning of chapter 132. And while Levi's bad hair moment is cute in chapter 127, it is also a little reminder that for a man who usually slept only 3-4 hours per day to be asking people to shut up after he had been sleeping for almost two entire days… well, Levi is definitely wrecked.

And, again, just like on chapter 33 moment, Levi is worriedly watching Hanji, his kids, Titan Shifters, and his former SC subordinates (because as SC Captain, Levi was still on top of the Survey Corps) all fight to death while he is powerless to do a thing - powerless to protect everyone. I dare anyone to look at Levi's body language here, and say he didn't want to be capable of fighting! 

And as if not enough, Yelena also goes and rubs salt on his psychological wounds saying Humanity can't be separated from violence. Levi is being crushed from all sides just in 2 days of having to kill his 30 titanized soldiers + nearly have died + now this, and with millions of people dying meaninglessly under Colossal Titan feet because of Eren!! 

Oh, Levi definitely needed to rest until the end of the story - to be wrapped on warm blankets, cradled to sleep, with someone softly combing his hair, and calmly whispering to him that the fight was over, and that everyone was okay and safe, and that they're finally free so he could sleep how much he wanted!! But Isym said, "No, sweetie! The Titanpocalypse is here, and you better pull yourself together, and get your nearly-kissed-by-Death body into that goddamn hell after rising from the dead in three days, and save everyone's asses - making parallels with the One with whom you share your birthday date!"

He can't even mourn Hanji's death in peace either

"4) While flying on Falco he kept saying "Where is he? Where is the beast? And kept remembering Erwin's orders. Doesn't that sound like a simp to you?" 

That's what we get when the only remaining adult who is not actively engaged on the physical battle to rescue Armin is trying to do something useful despite being nearly incapacitated on a Flying Titan's back (*sighs*).

I don't blame anyone for thinking whatever they think Levi looks like in this part though. This is the moment Levi has to reflect about his and the SC's role, and this also has to do with his matter regarding Zeke and Erwin and the vow indeed.

Levi believed in Hanji's theory that the Rumbling - which was about to crush the rest of humanity right under Levi's sight - was going to stop once Zeke was killed, but I definitely can see from where it comes the "Levi is obsessed with killing Zeke for Erwin's order from 4 years ago". The drawing and Levi's words are all in front of our eyes. Moreover, it's to Erwin (person) that Levi makes the vow to, and in a position where he is clearly set as a Knight making an oath to his King. And at the same time it's interesting that Levi remembers Erwin tired, the lights of his eyes dead, and when he looks up at him, Erwin isn't free as Levi remembered when he saved Armin during serum bowl. If anything, it's the first time Levi feels like he has failed his duty, disappointed his Commander, and imagines a dead person expecting something from him.

But the more I reread Levi's chapters (80, 81, 112, and 136), the more I feel like Levi's take towards the vow is multilayered. Killing Zeke has been one of the focus of Levi's narrative since chapter 75, where Erwin says he just trusts Levi to kill the Beast, and this got to another level along the years/story/chapters, especially after chapters 80-81, 112, 113. And, boy, Levi's devotion to fulfill a promise to the dead was his ultimate shackle - the biggest curse of his life, in a way.

But just like everything else Yams does when dealing with human nature, I don't think the vow can be solely understood as a plain "I'll kill the Beast Titan". It’s part of it, but not it all? Or maybe it's just me struggling to comprehend how Levi succumbed to the danger of being drunk on something that Kenny had warned him in his dying bed. Levi hellbent on fulfilling Erwin's last order as his duty (as he addresses the topic on 136) makes absolutely more sense to me than just revenge.

Still, at the very end, as strong as Levi's unwavering will to give meaning to all SC deaths, he helped humanity have a chance of survive at all because it was the right thing to do. I particularly feel like it is a reduction of Levi whenever he is frequently marked as a man who fulfilled a promise to his Commander rather than also praising ALL aspects that encompasses it. Levi's devotion to his duty, his sense of responsibility, his inhuman willpower to keep fighting even after nearly losing everything is incomparable. And this belongs to Levi's character in such a broader way. That's why he is Humanity’s Strongest after all!!

Another point people forget is that killing Zeke doesn't give meaning to the SC devoted hearts. It might have helped stop the Rumbling, but that's not enough - never was, and never would be worth their sacrifices. Levi also makes it very clearly in 139. The Titans are gone, the nightmare is over, humanity is free and not all doomed to die eaten alive or stomped powerless = "I guess this is the result of all of your devoted hearts". At most, killing Zeke is Levi finally breaking free from a curse that lasted way too long, and Levi held no personal triumphant satisfaction with it - just the damned realization this shit was finally over, forever.

Another poignant matter is that it was thanks to Erwin and the recruits' sacrifices that Paradis could learn about the truth of the World - the most crucial matter at stake at that moment. And the RtS victory allowed for the Island to be freed of the horror of the Titans. Yet, Levi rejects this huge fact as enough to be worth the devoted hearts. I can’t imagine how getting Zeke’s head alone would ever be comparable, or superior, to all that the SC had accomplished until they got the brats to the sea. Unless, ofc, Levi's narrative is really supposed to be the "Revenge-Avenge" Tragic Hero...

Then, if considering this idea is a part of him, it's interesting to remember too that Levi knows Zeke killed Mike, Nanaba, and the Ragako Village; and that Levi chose to send around a hundred people to their death in the Beast's hand so that Humanity inside the Walls could survive; and that the massacre on Marley was orchestrated by Zeke mostly (bc Eren doesn't have the brains for it), and that Zeke titanized Levi's soldiers in the forest... Then it makes sense Levi also had assumed to be his role to guarantee Zeke wouldn't get out of this all in impunity for all the deaths he had committed. But there is still a difference between revenge, punishment, and retributive justice.

Levi knows, though, what Grisha did to Zeke, and he had a brief idea what Zeke lived in Marley, and must have imagined how Zeke was used as Beast Titan for years in Marley wars, and what Zeke ultimately wanted to do when Yelena asked Hanji and everyone to admit Zeke’s plan was better. I really wanted to see what happened in chapter 132, when Levi reflects about Yelena's words, and hearing Hanji blaming herself/taking responsibility for Eren's downfall, and saying she was powerless. But thank you, Yams, for leave me hanging on this too 🙃

Anyway, in chapter 136, Levi has a lot to cover of his and SC's narratives in the brief 03-04 pages he is given. And imo, it goes as the one chapter I wanted Yams himself talking about just for the sake of full understanding. But we're probably never getting it, so at this point, everyone will take Levi's words and actions however they want - from reduced to a simp who just fought to kill monkey to get revenge from the man Levi himself chose to let die (and *cough* had no regrets about it *cough*) up to Humanity’s Strongest soul and last bearer of the Wings of Freedom, with a unmatched devoted heart.

However, blessed be the new OP!! I think the nihilism and despair and desperation and tears are setting even more clear the state of the last events of snk. Scratch the stupid ass shipper interpretation of that moment, and focus on Levi's journey with SC's devoted hearts in a world bathed on blood, death, and meaninglessness. Hopefully, it and the animation will help dissipate the mist over Levi's character too.

Yes, it's raining tears

[katnissdoesnotfollowback]

Do you think Peeta felt like he was receiving mixed signals from Katniss during CF? Or did he always assumed she had no feelings for him and accepted that?

I’ve always been so curious about his thought process after the first games and their reconciliation for the Victory Tour.

I wonder if he ever felt used by her, even if he loved her. 😭

Hey there, Anon! Thanks for the questions!

Okay I’m gonna apologize up front, Anon. Actually no. I’m not apologizing for this. I’ve been prepping myself to write an entire essay, but before I post it, I feel like I gotta throw up some disclaimers here. And honestly... I shouldn’t have to, but it’s been awhile since I’ve been active on here and I’m still kinda smarting over the things that happened that led to me reducing my involvement in the first place. And tumblr and fandom being what they are... please forgive me for building some fences to hopefully protect myself. You, Anon, have not triggered this initial commentary with your message. It’s leftover baggage, not your fault (I don’t think...*suspicious eyes*), so I hope you will understand and not be upset that I feel the need to do this before answering your questions.

We members of fandoms and denizens of tumblr usually state our meta posts and analysis posts as though they are fact. Not that this is necessarily a bad practice. I just spent three weeks writing two and a half literary analysis papers for my classes. I’ll spend the next two weeks polishing the last of those off and probably starting on an entirely new one because I gotta turn right around and produce three 10-page research papers by the end of November. And guess what... literature professors never EVER want you to "maybe" or "possibly" or "seemingly" your way through an argument. Write with authority, they say. Not because you are arguing that your interpretation is THE RIGHT interpretation so much as you are making a case for your interpretation being THE MOST APT or the most applicable. They require strength of speech because your argument is inherently weakened by using less than definite wording. It is this because of that. Much more convincing than “Well it might be...”

Funny thing about literary scholars, despite their insistence on making your analysis in strong language, a lot of them are willing to listen to different takes and go “Huh. Interesting. I can see the possibilities. Tell me more,” while still holding a vastly different interpretation of their own. In other words, they accept that someone else’s interpretation does not undermine their own. We all do not, and really should not, think exactly the same way. How fucking boring would that be if we did???

In a fandom space, we often write our meta posts in language similar to what a literature student would be expected to write. In definite terms. It is this because of that. You also see it in literary critiques and also movie critiques. And a lot of times, this causes friction because sometimes when people read those meta posts, they take it as a personal attack on their own, different interpretation, as though OP is suggesting that their version is The Right Answer and everyone else is wrong. Which is really not always the case. Even in the sense that we often use those phrases of “I’m right” or “That’s just how it is I don’t make the rules” or “You can’t convince me otherwise,” a lot of time that’s fandom speak for our attachment to certain idea or theory or way of thinking about the text and the characters. In literary terms... those kinds of remarks are hyperbole. Not a direct attack on anyone. Where it becomes problematic is when a fandom member takes that language of fandom literally and/or uses it against another fandom member rather than as a way of expressing our enthusiasm. Or when it turns into an attack on someone’s reading comprehension... the idea that “If you don’t see it my way then you didn’t read the books.” “You’re just projecting onto the characters.” “Any idiot can see...” “If you don’t see it then you don’t belong here.” “Go read other stories/characters.” “Stay out of the tags...” “You’re ruining the characters/my OTP...”

That’s not... that’s not helpful. That kind of attitude stifles free flowing ideas and leaves no room for growth. No room for pretty much anything but one viewpoint. Which will inevitably lead to the shrinking of whatever fandom community is left years after our base content was created. I truly believe that best practice on here is to step back when something upsets you or angers you and ask “How does this really affect me? Am I pissed off because this person is actually hurting me or am I conflating a differing opinion with a personal attack?”

All of this is a convoluted way of saying that even if my words (as I finally get around to answering your question) sound like I'm saying "I'm right, everyone else is wrong," that's actually not the case. Not at all. It's a mother freaking opinion, even if it’s stated like it’s fact. And I’m a big enough girl to be fully aware of it, and know that there will be plenty of people who disagree or see it differently. Great! Wonderful! Nobody has to agree with me. Literally no one. But nor do I appreciate it when others take a swing at me, or at others on here, without granting other people the right to our own opinions or expecting me to edit down my voice just because they don’t agree with me.

DISCLAIMERS DONE! In case you skipped over them. ;)

I think a lot of us are curious about Peeta's thoughts and feeling throughout the series, which is pretty natural. Since all three books of the original trilogy are narrated from Katniss's first person POV, all we ever see is what she chooses to show us. Every character is portrayed through her view, and that affects how we view them. As readers, we have choices to make on how we view the Not Katniss characters. We could assume that Katniss gives us an accurate and full portrayal of all of them... a risky proposition given that she is a flawed character and an unreliable narrator. So really, Katniss isn't always giving us The Right Answer. She’s not omniscient by any stretch of the literary imagination. She is not God, or whichever higher being you might believe in. Which opens the entire series to the possibility of varying interpretations.

Where Katniss gives us only hints and clues, readers have the opportunity to extrapolate, imagine, and explore the possibilities of characterization; and quite frankly since Suzanne Collins left those details out, her intention is not necessarily more important than your interpretation. She set her work out on the sea of readers and capitulates control of how it is received and interpreted. Hello Death of the Author. But you know, that’s like my personal opinion on the matter and it’s influenced by how I view my own writing. Yeah, I meant one thing and if people ask me what I intended, I’ll tell them, but I have no intention of shitting on someone else’s interpretation of my writing. Dude. To me, that’s the beauty of being a writer -- the fact that you can create something, set it adrift, and a complete stranger might see something that you yourself never thought of before. HOW FREAKING COOL IS THAT?!?!

So how does this apply to Peeta? Well... Peeta is his own character. Yes, we get to see him through Katniss’s eyes, but that means, as I said before, that we only see the things that Katniss notices or that pertain directly to her in terms of the action on the page. The text being the text with a limited first person narrative leads me to the conclusion that Peeta led his own life completely separate of Katniss. He did things, said things, made friends, had fights with his brothers, a relationship with his parents, maybe even kissed a girl or two, was motivated to act completely independent of Katniss and in ways that don’t exist directly on the page, because Katniss herself doesn’t always see them or comment on them directly.

“It’s exactly like that!” he yells at me. “I have people I care about, too, Katniss! Family and friends back in District Twelve who will be just as dead as yours if we don’t pull this thing off.” -- Catching Fire, chapter 5

And if we’re willing to grant Peeta his own life, we have to be willing to grant him his own feelings. Personally, I have never subscribed to the interpretation that everything Peeta did in the first book was out of romantic love for Katniss. *shrug emoji* For example, I’m of the opinion that the gift of burned bread was, if an act of love, an example of agape, or the love of everyone, of humanity. At that point, Peeta had never even spoken to Katniss, and I don’t believe a romantic love can be viably formed and maintained without some form of communication, otherwise, you don’t really know the person. But I do believe that 11 year old Peeta was able to feel compassion and enough love for a fellow human who was suffering (and yes also happened to be the object of his crush), to make a form of sacrifice in giving her the bread.

I also (unpopular opinion alert) believe that the same form of agape love  influenced his motivation to form a strategy for his first Games that revolves around saving his district partner at his expense. I’m not saying that the fact that it is Katniss, his crush, going into the arena with him played zero part in his choices in the first book. I’m suggesting that his crush on Katniss was only part of his motivation for working to get her on the Victor podium and himself in a coffin.

“It doesn’t matter, Katniss,” he says. “I’ve never been a contender in these Games anyway.”

.......

“Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to... to show the Capitol that they don’t own me. That I’m more than just a piece in their Games,” says Peeta. -- The Hunger Games, chapter 10

Alright let’s dig. First I want to say that the setting here is important. They are on the roof of the training center, and the roof has become the place in the Capitol where they tell each other the unvarnished truth. This is where Katniss tells Peeta about Lavinia and her part (through inaction although really what could she do) in Lavinia’s capture and Katniss’ subsequent guilt over it. (The Hunger Games, chapter 6) That’s important because what they say to each other on the roof is not meant to manipulate, so those two quotes are part of how he really feels and thinks.

As for what he’s saying, there’s three parts of this conversation. The first is that he expects to die. He doesn’t actually believe he can win. The second (which I left out) is a desire to maintain his purity of self. The third is the idea that he wants to, on an individual level, undermine what the Capitol does through the Games by making his death, Peeta’s death, a meaningful one. This has nothing to do with him being “in love” with Katniss. This is strictly Peeta’s desire to not die for no reason. The deaths in the Games are pointless. Peeta wants to upend the system. The ironic thing is that even though he talks like he hasn’t figured ot out, he’s already  put into motion the thing that he wants to do -- upending the system by dying to keep someone else alive. And if we want further layers of significance: what he’s doing mirrors what Katniss did in volunteering for Prim. SHe tells us that volunteering is rare except in the career districts, where the Games are viewed differently. Volunteering, even for a family member, just doesn’t happen. Hence why her act is rebellious and gains attention. So again, Peeta is searching for a meaningful death, through an act that is agape love, not eros or romantic love, but it also ends up subverting the system in which they live. The potential for romantic love does complicate his choices, and perhaps give different levels of depth to his choice, but I don’t think it’s the only reason for his choice.

What the heck does that have to do with the question you asked me? Glad you asked! I’m getting there. All of that to point out that Peeta’s life, despite the limited view of his character that we get through Katniss, would not be solely influenced by Katniss herself. Despite the fantastic, science fiction elements to the books, in terms of characterization, and interpersonal relationships, they tend to follow a somewhat Realistic rather than Romantic format. By Romantic, I refer to the tradition of Romanticism where a realistic form of cause and effect wasn’t as central to characterization as say passion, divine influence, the power of the imagination, or the sublime. Not to knock Romanticism, I just don’t see it’s traditions at work in The Hunger Games as much as some others.

So to answer your questions... yes, yes at first, and yes. I would guess that Peeta does feel as though he’s getting mixed signals from Katniss during Catching Fire, at least for the first half up until *drum roll please* the final roof scene. The Place of Truth. And here is why:

We know that once he apologizes for acting wounded after their first Games, and Katniss returns the apology (Catching Fire, chapter 4), Katniss and Peeta are working towards being friends. There are of course some minor bumps in the road, but once they acknowledge that they have to work together and tell each other things, they do so in mostly admirable fashion. The thing is, most of Katniss’ actions during the Victory Tour in terms of physical affection towards Peeta are easily dismissed by him as part of the act. Easy peasy, still friends. Except there’s that pesky detail of the nights on the train... Ah platonic bedshare.* I won’t lie, I literally salivate over that trope in pretty much all forms of intimate relationships. Friendships, sisters, platonic romance, uncertain lovers, absolutely filthy sexed up lovers just holding each other? I die for it. Fangirl moment over, back to the essay!

*I’m not talking fanfiction here, which there is a plethora of ‘what if something sexual actually did happen on the train?’ Katniss specifically tells us that it didn’t. Maybe she is an unreliable narrator, but that’s not because she outright lies in her narration, it’s because 1) she is not omniscient so she has a limited perspective 2) her narration is influenced by her opinions and thoughts so it could misrepresent certain things and 3) she sometimes is uncertain or flawed in her own view of self, to include not quite being able to figure out why certain people are acting certain ways in response to her. These are all very realistic flaws to give a human character and add to the unreliability of her narration. Still, she’s pretty damn vulnerable and open in her narration, to include telling us things that she’s ashamed of and the fact that her pee has turned brown when she’s dehydrated in the first arena, so I don’t see her being dishonest about this particular aspect of her and Peeta’s relationship. By all means, fanfic it up, but to me that’ll always be canon divergent fic.*

So it’s platonic, but: teenage boy mass of confusion.

I don’t think Katniss intends to hurt or confuse Peeta by sharing her bed with him. She is used to sharing a bed, remember? She’s shared one with Prim for most of her life, after all, and so she is both familiar with and comfortable with sharing a bed in a non-sexual, non-romantic manner. In fact, she craves that kind of human contact and closeness. She is most lost when she’s sleeping alone.

We are never told if Peeta has to share a bed with his brothers (ugh I have two sons with whom I’ve had to bedshare with in hotels and because Big Scary Storms, and I pity Peeta if he did lololololol), which leaves him potentially vulnerable to thinking those moments on the train meant something else on top of them comforting and protecting one another. In fact, his comment in Mockingjay would imply that he didn’t share a bed with his brothers, because his brain attached some kind of significance to it beyond the platonic with Katniss (or he’s just being as ass in that scene, also possible given hijacking).

Still, Katniss’s intentions might not be enough to completely erase Peeta’s confusion about the moments in bed together. In other words, just because nothing sexual happens doesn’t mean that Peeta is exempt from wondering if there is a deeper romantic or emotional attachment being formed when they sleep together. 

And Katniss is freaking desperate for physical affection. Once she breaks that barrier with someone she trusts, it almost becomes force of habit. She admits to missing holding Peeta’s hand when they do so after the apology at the beginning of Catching Fire. She describes that kiss in the snow in wistful terms of longing, almost crying. She holds onto his hand and brings it to her cheek after the incident with the fence being turned on while she was in the woods and the Peacekeepers waiting in her house. She doesn’t want to let go when he embraces her on the train to their second Games. After shutting Peeta out when the Victors tease her and finally letting him back into her bed, she talks about how badly she’s been longing “for the feel of him beside me in the dark.” All of these events happen without the presence of the camera. These are all moments of Katniss just wanting physical touch, specifically from Peeta, for her sake and no one else’s, because it is what she wants.

But also at this point, she’s given him no concrete reason to believe that they are anything more than friends. The fact that they go from apology to hand holding as tentative friends to bed sharing in a manner of like two days would suggest that their development of physical affection does not follow a more traditional idea of courtship. So yes, I can see how Katniss’ desire for physical affection might sow the seeds of doubt in Peeta’s mind and make him believe there is hope for them as a romantic couple. He’s a little too eager to confirm that Katniss has only kissed Gale once, and Peeta’s first response to Katniss asking him to run away from the district with her is to ask who else is coming, knowing that she wouldn’t just plan this to get the two of them out, but more importantly, when she lists their families and Haymitch... Peeta immediately asks about Gale. And his answer reveals that he has intuited what exactly Gale feels about her, and that Gale wouldn’t tolerate Peeta’s presence on a soujourn in the woods, but why? If Peeta doesn’t present a threat to Gale and Katniss’ romantic potential, then why should Gale dislike the idea of Peeta going along? Why should Peeta assume that Gale would be adamantly opposed to his presence? So yes, I think it’s entirely possible that Peeta thought she was sending mixed signals.

This isn’t meant to bash Katniss, only to highlight the potential for a form of miscommunication or crossed signals for them, and to point out that just because you don’t mean to hurt someone or make them feel a certain way, your direct actions and words to them might have unintended effects. If Katniss isn’t perfect, neither is Peeta. And if he is capable as a character of having a life and motivations independent of Katniss, he is also capable of feeling things about what she does that Katniss does not intend to make him feel. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

That being said, I also think he did accept that her feelings for him did not and would not extend past friendship, and tried to make peace with it. The two are not mutually exclusive. Think of it like a rollercoaster.

Peeta tells himself that they are friends, nothing more. He repeats this to himself. She starts demanding he sleep with her. Nothing romantic or sexual happens, but this is an act of extreme intimacy... maybe, possibly? ...We could get married, she says.

BAM! Reality check.

Peeta tells himself its fake, it’s fake, it’s fake, but she’s been been wanting him to sleep with her so he climbs in her bed on the way home, and accepts that this is just what they do, protect each other from the night. But also they are engaged and at that point believe that they will somehow have to make a life together, so he takes the liberty of saying things that maybe he wouldn’t have said before. Life goes on, friendship is fine. ... Peeta would you run away with me? she asks. Yes! Wait... What about Gale? Also who’s getting whipped?

BAM! Reality check.

Alright, she loves Gale. No big deal. Friends. Friends is good. ...I live three houses down why are you calling me? Friends, we’re friends we’re friends it’s good, never mind that I’m probably gonna be married to someone who is in love with someone else, I got this ... wait where is Katniss and why are there Peacekeepers here???? ... Stay with me, she says.

BAM! Feelings. Damnit. Why me?

We could go on... but I’ll spare you my terrible summary. Anyways, the point is, I think he did accept that she didn’t have those kinds of feelings for him, but as she developed those kinds of feelings through Catching Fire, I think he would’ve picked up on some of the moments, dared to hope, and then had to crush those feelings. And the fact that he felt like he was being yanked back and forth might have led to moments of feeling like she was using him. However...

One does not run into a bloodbath/Hunger Games Feast to save the life of a person you don’t give a flying fuck about. One does not suggest mutual suicide if there is zero level of care. One does not ask a person to flee a tyrannical government if one does not give a shit if the person is tortured and killed. So Peeta could have, and likely did, rationalize that maybe Katniss didn’t feel the depth of feelings or attachment to him that he wanted her to feel, when he wanted her to feel them, but I think he knew there was some level of trust, affection, and attachment to him on her part, which could have led to confusion via that pesky thing we call hope and possibility.

All of that, and I still don’t think this complication of their relationship diminishes it, not by any means. I actually think it enhances it, deepens it. Relationships are fucking messy. They’re not pretty or perfect. They’re not linear in development, either. They just... aren’t, I’m sorry. You cannot walk through life without unintentionally hurting someone. Conflict of desires and interests is GOING to happen. And I see that in Katniss and Peeta’s relationship as it develops. It’s not healthy to be solely motivated by one other person, to put everything in your identity into one other person. So yeah, I’m not a “Peeta did everything for Katniss and nothing else” kind of reader. Peeta can love Katniss while still feeling used by her in certain moments. He can love her and still be confused by the signals she is sending him in regards to their relationship. He can love her and still have a life and relationship outside of her. They are not mutually exclusive, and to me, that’s more reflective of reality, which as sad as it might be at times, is actually part of the beauty of their relationship.

[themouthking]

Alright, since it went up all I can think about is Our All Nighter/Yearning/The Macon Brothers and my connection and meaning-seeking brain needs to write a pseudo-academic analysis so, without further adieu, here is that, fully unedited and raw. Spoilers behind the cut, you were warned.

My theses with this are a few things, one being that this is a classic gothic story and I will fight god over this one because I have the academic chops to back up this claim. I am not tens of thousands of dollars in debt to an English Language Arts degree that was fully Theory (analysis instead of literature) to not know what I'm talking about. Plus, I took two gothic literature courses, so. Other theses are: this is a story about being lead astray, and about coming out (sort of), and about coming home.

So we get the set up. The tour of the house, so we know the lay of the land, what everything looks like so we know what's uncanny when the change hits. But beyond that, we get the "this isn't our house but it's our house" cabin in the woods sort of vibe off of it, mood lighting, staying up all night, that kind of thrilling titillating scenario.

First, a few interesting notes:

Rhett is right, it was a prize at the end of GMM 2030. This means this is something they were planning and just a really cool, meta detail.

The album is called Yearning. (C'mon.)

@mythicaliz pointed out, Macon feels/seems like a combination between McLaughlin and Lincoln, and@nectarine-migraine points out that Rhett was born in Macon, Georgia.

The Society seems to think it's going to become a podcast, and honestly, it probably will and I hope to fuck they RECORD A WHOLE ALBUM. STOP BEING COWARDS. Anyway.

Also very random, I dig the vaguely Pontypool vibes of it when Rhett tells Link (now Harlon) not to sing the song, and Harlan responds with "why?" and that it's his fav-o-right song - it gives a vibe of the song itself being the cause of all this.

Now I'm going to hit my analysis sorted by themes.

1. Backmasking & Being Lead Astray

[Or backmasting, Link, you beautiful idiot.]

This is the big theme. It's an interesting plot device and Rhett even lays the background for us when he talks about their pastor coming to warn them about heavy metal, but what he glosses over is the fact that it was so much more than just heavy metal (see the whole "Paul is dead" controversy, among many others).

"Various fundamentalist Christian groups have declared that Satan—or Satan-influenced musicians—use backmasked messages to subliminally alter behavior. Pastor Gary Greenwald claimed that subliminal messages backmasked into rock music induce listeners towards sex and drug use." (blurb in the search results when you google "backmasking")

The fear instilled by those in positions of religious power was meant to deter youths from rock and other music which would lead them into sin. Lead them to alter their behavior. There would be this seed planted if you listened to this music, that you were opening the door for someone else's intentions to get in, these desires, these urges that weren't your own - sex and drugs - and that you'd be straying from what is good and right. That essentially, you'd be lost to this influence without really knowing it.

And so with that technique employed, we have this woman (and later, them) trapped in a record saying things like "I just want out" "Just open the door" "It's been so so long" "I feel so lost" (from what I can hear of the Hazel audio), and then thanks to @half-of-something uploading the backmasking from the Brothers version, we get a little more: "It's so dark, it's so lonely." "Let me out, you can help me." "Just take my place, why don't you take my place? I think you'll love it here." "Please, I'm so dirty*."

They take the whole "music will lead you into sin and you, the you that is good and pure and right, will be lost" thing one step further with Hazel (and later, Hardy and Harlon) actually lost to the music, consumed by it and made into a living horror, the very thing pastors warn kids about. It turns the music itself into the thing we're meant to fear.

My read, and I think their intention in this, is that Yearning actually consumes those who listen to it. By that reading, you can assume Hazel isn't the original "artist" as it were, but just the last person who's been a victim of the music. You play the record and you open the door and you let the last person out who's been trapped there, and you switch places. This is the gothic horror piece of it. This is the surface of the story, what's actually happening.

But when we get into the belief that was widely held that backmasking was a tool for Satan and Satanists to alter the behavior of the youth who listened to music, we can go a little deeper. Link gets lost in the record, in the woods, and he loses himself, he forgets. He's Harlon. When Rhett goes after him, he comments that Link's in real deep - so deep he doesn't recognize Rhett.

But in going in, he's susceptible to being lost too. In fact, we see Hazel standing over Rhett, dressing him as Hardy in part 9, and he gasps awake like he'd been drowning, realizes he's been dressed like Link has been, and says they've got to get out of here - before Rhett starts to forget too, before he can't remember that they shouldn't be here.

*"Please, I'm so dirty." I just find it interesting that this is one of the things in the backmasking in the Brothers version. Also, "It's so dark, it's so lonely." If we follow the logic laid out, getting lost to the music is letting a Satanic influence lead you astray - maybe that's forbidden sexuality/homosexuality (which from a fundamental Christian standpoint, is dirty -- please know I am not saying Rhett and Link think homosexuality is dirty, but rather that the whole theme of this can be read a commentary on the church and its views), but it's definitely being cast from the light and banished to a place where the best you can hope for is to claw your way out by dooming another soul. The record is a purgatory, an in-between place.

2. Coming Out

["Let me out, you can help me."]

So back to the theme of desperately wanting to be let in, back into the real world, with light and people where it's clean and not lonely. This builds the idea that to be "out", outside of the real world, trapped in the record - quite the opposite of what we would consider to be "out" in modern ideations of it... more like closeted - is dirty, lonely, an exile. Does Hazel want to come out (or rather, back in) and shed her record/closet identity and rejoin the "normal" world? We don't know that.

What we do know is that Rhett wants to save Link and return to the normal world, wants Link to remember he's not Harlan. In the record woods, Link forgets himself and he forgets Rhett and he would stay if not for him. They glossed over it, but I'm curious why Harlan really left the woods - he certainly didn't seem to want to, and he didn't act like he knew Rhett at all. I wish they'd spent a little bit more time there fleshing that out, because that was an interesting moment.

In looking at this theme of coming out, again, I'm not putting words in their mouths - I'm reading meaning in the piece they presented. And remember, these are two men who publicly detailed their own deconstruction and all the reasons why, the ugly old beliefs they held, and their complicated feelings about it. This story holds some complicated feelings about what it means to be inside or outside, being trapped and wanting in (or out).

There's a moment where I wondered if there wasn't a nod to feeling a little trapped in what they create, like Hazel (or whoever originally recorded the haunted record) feels trapped in Yearning. They made this world for themselves, Mythical, they do GMM, they've built this thing and in a way, they probably feel like they can't get out of it, can't break away. Maybe there's been a fantasy of trading places, of letting two people come in and take their places and letting them free, anonymous men running into the woods to live a life out of the public eye, quite literally in the dark.

"To get to where you want to go, you must go through the darkness to reach the light. Transformation does not happen in your comfort zone, and the black crow intends to make you uncomfortable so you can achieve that transformation." (on crow symbolism)

And there's the very literal fact that the record, the room, the closet, the thing that catches you and holds you trapped is named Yearning. When you're inside, you're yearning but you can't have - because you're alone.

3. Coming Home

Before we really get into the Coming Home theme, we need to look at the dead crows.

Dead Crows

This is something I almost overlooked, but when I did a little digging, it's actually really, really interesting. What do dead crows mean, symbolically?

If you see a dead crow, some believe this means you're nearing the end of one phase in your life and moving into another. This could be in your relationships, your job, or many other areas. Perhaps you're getting signs of spiritual awakening in your life that you need to pay attention to.

This is interesting for a few reasons. Simplest being, this whole Tiktok series is literally a new phase in Rhett and Link's work. I count this as a departure from even Bleak Creek, which, though it has similar, dark themes, I'd argue doesn't hold a candle to Yearning (fight me on this lol).

In the Tiktoks, when they play the record and "open the door" to the other world, letting Hazel in, that's when the crows start hitting the windows. Crows hit the windows any time they try to leave the house. With the door to the woods open - and them being on the cusp of moving into another life, of being Harlon and Hardy - they're finding dead crows which symbolize ending one phase of life and moving to another. Getting a spiritual awakening.

there is also a belief that dead blackbirds, including crows, point to an unresolved tension deep inside someone. This is because the color black represents that which we cannot see.

But also a dead crow points to unresolved tension. It points to what we can't see.

A Note on the Unresolved Tension

It bears noting that they build tension into the story at the start, Rhett goading Link about how long he can last in bed, the slapping and running away, "You can slap me later." It's significant enough tension that there are a few comments about it, noting that since they're just insulting each other maybe they should write another insult battle song.

Macon

Another incredibly literal nod in the story - Macon, GA is where Rhett was born. In this, they're both named Macon. Hazel is, too, and it seems like whoever goes into the record becomes a Macon. With this, there's a feeling of possession - like in writing it this way, when Link goes in the record, he becomes a part of Rhett, like taking his last name. And it's quite a literal going home.

Finally, back to Coming Home

At the end in part 11 when Link lets the watcher into the fact that he really doesn't remember the record and puts it back on and backmasks it, Hazel doesn't waste time in trading places with them and we watch the record sleeve change as she pulls them into her world and escapes finally, perhaps for good.

There's a theme of rebirth here as we see, though they're losing themselves, forgetting their lives as Rhett and Link, there's a haunting feeling of peace about them on the album cover as Harlan and Hardy. They're calm, hands folded behind their backs, dressed to match the vibe of the heavy woods around them. There are no crows on their album cover like there was on hers.

And note:

This signifies that you're finally gaining enough emotional intelligence to understand what is going on in your life. You're now well equipped with the wisdom to overcome or accomplish what you desire. (meaning of holding a crow on your hand, like Hazel does on her album cover)

They did it. They went into the record, and they let Hazel out. There aren't crows anymore, dead and symbolizing coming positive change or alive and symbolizing going through the darkness to find the light. They don't need the crows anymore because they're together.

The backmasting switches off when Link or Harlan comes back to switch it back to playing forwards, and we're left on the lyrics that give us that sense of inevitability. It's only a matter of time, someone will come along. But until then, they're inside Yearning, and they've got each other. They're home.

[miserabull]

A very long meta-analysis on P2 Bad Grief

So, I've gone over every dialogue with this guy a few times, and there is some stuff I've never seen addressed before. This is a mix of analyzing and theory that have been in my head for a while, and I’d love to know if it all also makes sense to other people

The thing about Classic and P2 Grief, is that they are very different characters playing the same role. Who is Bad Grief? A thief, a kingpin of the town's criminal underbelly, and a smuggler working for Big Vlad. In P1, he's also a dangerous murderer who kills people for fun, but denies it, even claims that he kicks people out of his gang for daring to take up knives. Dude lies a lot. In fact, he maintains the lie up until the last route, the Changeling's, and then tries that on her too but ends up confessing. This is my very wordy way of saying that while I kinda agree with people who are like "he's not a violent murderer like P1 Grief", P1 Grief also claimed to not be one up to the last minute. I don't think they are making him a sadistic killer this time, yeah, but I'm pretty sure he's a liar, and that there's a darker secret. The game implies Grief keeps his cards close to his chest and there is more to him several times, like here, when you talk with Lara's reflection

Lara's Reflection: You see, she puts her stock in deeds and not in words. So Stakh was always close to her; for he would hear his heart, and act. A trait you share, Burakh.

Haruspex: And the most taciturn of us all, Bad Grief.

Lara's Reflection: He speaks so much yet does so much more.

or when Artemy confronts him at Aspity's Hospice:

Bad Grief: You heard about Rubin? Know why the Kin wants him dead? He's walkin' around all downcast, doesn't sleep. Says not to ask. Says it's safer like that. What's he done, I wonder? I wanted to ask Sahba, but maybe you know?

Haruspex: You're lying. That's not what you wanted to ask. I can tell.

Bad Grief: If I did lie, I wouldn't tell you the truth now anyway, would I? So back off. 

I'm not gonna go over the blowing-the-train tracks quest now, though I have some thoughts on it/what I think might be his plan there. For now it suffices to say that that whole thing is very odd, that his plan doesn't make sense(yeah, blowing up the tracks is a bad idea for his business. kinda meaningless though if the alternative is being hanged). That is to say, I'm pretty sure there's a hidden agenda there that we're probably only finding out in Changeling route.

So, what I mean is, if you think P2 Grief is harmless, or just a clown, or became a gang leader by accident, then, well. I think honey, you got a big storm comin'

A few more notes on Grief's character, and what I think of what we got so far:

-I believe the reflection(I have some thoughts about the nature of those too, actually lmao) is telling the truth, mostly. He is terrified, he doesn't want Artemy to think badly of him, he never wanted violence. P2 Grief is younger, more sympathetic, and very obviously more scared than his P1 counterpart. I don't think he's out there killing for fun. Still, I think he has a lot of blood on his hands anyway.

-I think his loyalty to his friends is sincere. He's kind of really big on companionship and loyalty, which fits, as a gang member. I really think that he wants to belong, to a gang, to a friend group, somewhere. Artemy mentions he's "always been weird" a couple of times, or stuff like "I knew you'd end up like this." and that thing with Lara's reflection... I think Grief was always a little bit on the margins, even in his own friend group, and that's why he made a place for himself as the leader of the misfits, of the people who don't fit what the town considers to be good society. I gotta get on with this because this is gonna be long enough without me rambling about every single thought and feeling I have about this bastard though

-He doesn't give away Stakh's hideout accidentally because he's goofy and dumb. He mentions more or less where it is like, three times. I think it's obvious that he's practically asking Artemy to go check on him, but he doesn't want to be a snitch, so he plays the fool like "Oooh no I gave you a hint, I sure hope you don't go looking for him now, don't ask me because I’d never tell!!". He's playing the clown, he's not that stupid

Okay, now we're getting to the heart of things. In P1, along with the reveal that he's actually a violent murderer who played another violent murderer(Barley) into taking the fall for his crimes, we get something else: he's working under the patronage and protection of Vlad Olgimsky. In P2, they put a lot more emphasis on that, Grief will tell you about it in the first AND second conversation you have. There is even a certain imagery associated with it... actually, allow me a quick digression here, I wanna go over some motifs around Grief. 

Grief is pretty into clockwork and gears, going by his choice of decoration for his Lair. The town itself is compared to a machine several times, by himself, by Big Vlad, and regarding how the Kains view it. I risk to say that the way Grief sees it is rather different from the Kains, at least at first.  For him it seems to be more of a blunt factory machine, while to the Kains...it means something else, more complex. Grief seems to have glimpsed what that is inside the Cathedral, near the end. That reminds me of something else, in the Diurnal End when Grief talks about how he used to be a clocksmith before, and now he's going to be "another kind of clocksmith", I don't think he's necessarily being literal in either case. Curiously, there's also a Clocksmith inside the Cathedral in Marble Nest...but I'm going off topic again

Bad Grief: Not a keeper of stores, but stories. This town, this great machine, the gears don't turn on their own, no, not till they're slick with secrets. 

But so, webs and puppets. We return to Vlad Olgimsky(old), who uses the metaphor of his “web”. There's also an important character in Grief's journey that is strongly associated with (spider)webs and strings, and that's Aglaya. The most notable time Grief himself refers to it though, I think, it's in the Theatre of Death, if you let him die:

“My path was not called 'The Spider'. No, think wider. It was 'The Silkworm'! The end of a railroad, I pulled strings firm; unaware someone more cunning pulled mine upstairs.”

So about that. He’s referring to the PTB right? Probably, but not only. A theme in Patho is like...these layers of manipulation. I’m gonna pass the mic to P1 Clara and Saburov for a second:

Alexander Saburov: Begin with the Olgimskys. That is the most important sin for me, and the least for him, for it is not his fault. So did Olgimsky protect his illicit trade? Did he benefit from it?

Changeling: He didn't just benefit; he presided over it. Grief was his stooge.

Alexander Saburov: Now then, we shall skip the issue of the barber gang, since it's clear now who their true mastermind was... thanks to your courage, my brave girl.

Changeling: Don't skip it just yet. Barley was as much of a puppet in Grief's hands as Grief himself was for Olgimsky. Everyone has their toys.”

Grief is a puppet in Vlad’s hands both in P1 and P2, as there he says he’s Vlads “eyes and ears” in the warehouses. In the Cathedral, he seems to more or less realize the extent of it, and how it goes against what he always wanted in the first place: to not be trapped by anything. 

Bad Grief: I used to be a thief, yet they made me a storekeeper. And what a perfect fit I made! I got my Warehouse kingdom, and with it, the insides of the Town's great machine. I kept Vlad's riches while havin' all I could dream of. Can't imagine a sweeter life.

Funnily enough, by that time he’s trapped in someone else’s web: Aglaya’s. That seems to be his thing, he thought he was in control and playing everyone, knowing all the secrets and pulling strings. In the end, he’s a Silkworm in the web of bigger fish. I mean, spiders.

Bad Grief: ...Yet they, too, are controlled by someone. Insane to think what kind of teeth you need for that.

But okay. Back to the start, I believe Grief has a lot of blood in his hands even before shit breaks loose. The things he seems to be most afraid of are also… interesting. This ties to his connection to Big Vlad, and the Kin.

Grief’s role in the payroll seems to be as a stool pigeon. He knows where everyone goes, what people are talking about, what they don’t want to become public. And he responds to Big Vlad. What I think is, hm, you know, even after Victoria passed it seems like the Kin and the Bull Enterprise never really defied Olgimsky, or had a leader in any way. Grief, too, seems to enjoy a pretty comfortable life for a gang leader. As an important piece to Vlad, he really doesn’t have that much to fear, since the guy “owns everything” and is very explicit to Artemy about how he can destroy anyone who doesn’t obey him. And probably has done that before. My guess is, Grief kept the machine working right by tattling, so no leadership or enemy to Vlad’s Enterprise could rise. I’d speculate that Vlad possibly paid the favor not only financially, but by maintaining Grief in that position. Basically, I think with Grief’s info, Vlad could eliminate any potential problem. That would mean that maybe without even having to shed blood himself there might be a lot of deaths Grief is responsible for, not to speak of the maintenance of that horrible system in the town. I think the route they are going for here is that Grief is a class traitor.

Why do I say that? Well, first let’s look at Grief’s relationship with the Kin: he’s remarkably close to them for a townie. Geographically, obviously, and also in the sense of living on the margins of society, but he also shares many of their superstitions, and seems to hold Aspity’s opinion in high regard(even calls her Sahba). I find it easy to believe that many of his men are part of the community as well, due to not being welcome in the town. At that time we see him in the Hospice though, and talking with the Kin people there, it’s pretty clear that they are planning some sort of uprising. That it’s imminent. Grief seems to know it. Seems to be absolutely terrified of that too, and to feel betrayed by Vlad.

Bad Grief: It's too late for me, Cub. I've only got one road ahead of me now. Perhaps the outbreak is for the best... Plagues are like fires, people forget old scores. And all hell will break loose here soon.

Haruspex: Any dark prophecies to share? You're the criminal mastermind here, after all.

Bad Grief: No need to prophesize. People fear hunger. Even honest workers will turn their hatchets and hammers to crime. Burglin' houses, lootin' corpses, guttin' each other. They will. Oh, they will.

Haruspex: Not all of them, Grief. Not all.

Bad Grief: The turf's so dry, you don't even need a match-a glare would start a fire. And when the Kin bares its teeth, that's when we'll all dance! They're slow on the start, but oh so fast on the draw! The Master likes them mute and obedient, but apathy makes them that way, not stupidity. They're only obedient till the time comes. And here it comes.

And the people who lose their jobs? They won't be too fond of staying home. They'll find new hobbies, like looking for food, or venting their anger. ...And Fat Vlad shut his facilities down the day before yesterday, didn't he? Crafty... Didn't whisper so much as a single word to me. Do you think he knew?

At the same time he seems to think that he deserves this, and it’s inevitable. “We reap what we sow”, paraphrasing him. He talks a few times about how there’s a vile beast inside each person in the town, about how they are all wretched and everything, including him, which I think might just be a way of coping like “yeah, I sold out, but anyone would do the same if they were in my place”. 

So, yeah. What I think is that Grief was a guy that had no power and money, with absolutely no perspective, who due to his very particular skills had an opportunity to climb up and took it(all while still getting to pretend he’s an outlaw, free from the chains of society!). And it’s...very bad. And he knows it’s very bad, and he’s not evil or sadistic, but he’s immature, cowardly, and desperately wants to be in control of his own destiny, and to not be alone, and all that. He’s still Artemy’s childhood buddy, a loyal friend, and someone who never really wanted to cause that much damage. He also knows that what he did is unjustifiable, and that no matter what he truly feels, the damage is done and he’s guilty of horrible shit.

[leonawriter]

I often see that when people do meta or analysis (or even headcanons/fics) on Chuuya, they’ll touch on how he is with the mafia, and they’ll ask the question of “is he actually happy there, how free is he” among other things. Often these opinions are ones I have conflicted feelings about, as I’ll freely admit I’m biased toward him staying in the mafia, and some may have a harsher view on the mafia’s influence on him, or just in general, than I do.

Earlier I saw a post that touched on several things about Chuuya and the mafia that made me think. Some aspects had been mulling in my mind for a while, too. 

(I may go into a ramble here. I’m tired and there’s stuff going on. I just hope some of it makes sense.)

The first thing is that when we compare Chuuya’s relationship with the Sheep to that with the PM, it’s easy to say “he was never respected in the Sheep, they took advantage of him and used his power, emotionally manipulating him to feel responsible” but something that sticks out when Chuuya is dealing with Mori is that in spite of the Sheep being a “democratic” organisation, everyone outside of that group sees Chuuya as its leader. He’s the one who looks out for the members, he’s the most visible, so he’s the “king.”

Effectively, Mori treats him as such in their interactions, and recognises and respects that Chuuya, despite saying “I’m not a king, I just have a trump card up my sleeve!” several times, does want to have that kind of respect. To be listened to when he says to people “don’t do that” because he knows it’s in their best interests.

Chuuya’s downfall in the Sheep is that he’s the one with the most power in terms of violence and raw physical power, having all of all of his agency and social power taken away from him in small ways. Even such things as him wanting the kids to not go to the docks and buy alcohol is them saying that they don’t care about his opinion, they don’t care about his well-being. In their opinion, they do as they like, and when they fuck around and find out, he bails them out. 

Despite his repeated protestations of “I’m no king!”, he must have on some level have internalised the idea that not only should he take responsibility, but that the responsibility to look after the kids under his protection means that they should, in theory, listen to him as well. He was no king because he was a puppet monarch; someone who is there for show, but doesn’t make any decisions.

When Chuuya watches the way that Mori works, he’s already seen how the Sheep treat those they’re afraid of, even those that they should have trusted. He sees that his former allies, his former family, would give him up in a heartbeat if they thought he was a threat. Anyone who went through that would at some point ask “where did I go wrong?”, and Mori is the one who answers him in a way that doesn’t spare his feelings, and also encourages him to pick himself back up.

If you look at what Mori says, it explains to Chuuya why Shirase (and assumedly the Sheep council) acted the way that they did. He isn’t stupid, he knows it was controlled and orchestrated by Dazai and Mori, and even says so when he’s picked up by the mafia after being betrayed. But hearing Mori leads Chuuya to understand why it happen, and if you can understand why something went wrong, then you can learn how to handle things better next time.

Chuuya respects people, he likes people, he wants them to live. He grieves their loss. I truly think he’d come at being the boss - as I think he’d inevitably become, at some point in the near or distant future - in an entirely different way to how Mori does, purely by how Chuuya doesn’t think about things in such a logical, optimal solution-based way. However, he does very much think in a way that suits the mafia. He can weigh one life against another’s, and choose the life of his own against that of someone who's done no wrong other than to go against him. He can choose the “organisation” over other people. He was good at the jewellery business when he first started out, and I’d love to know what he’s been doing since then. And he doesn’t seem to show any discomfort with that!

The thing is this - there are many reasons Chuuya stays in the mafia. 

One is that he respects and admires the people he works with, and his boss. That respect and admiration is also not a one-way street; these people see him as more than just his ability, even when they know what that is and what his origins are. That’s enough for a lifetime of gratitude, and more than just gratitude, but a feeling of “how can I ever repay this?”. And the only thing that they want from him in return is that he keeps developing, becoming more confident and better at his job(s).

Another reasons is, as said above, he has the mindset for it. He is that strange kind of person who is both infinitely kind and capable of love but also infinitely capable of cruelty and violence. Each time I think “where would Chuuya be if he weren’t in the mafia” I think of how the closest we see to his sort of mindset is either in another criminal organisation, in the Hunting Dogs (who aren’t criminal, but are the only organisation that are allowed to do such things and also be within the law), and, well... Tanizaki. Tanizaki, who would be perfectly happy to assassinate a guy just to save his boss’ life, and who someone said would do just fine in the mafia. 

The thing is, the ways in which Chuuya is trapped by the mafia are general only of his own making. He seems to have this idea that he has to have a certain kind of self-image, one that he began to cultivate back when he first joined, so that he would be given respect. In some ways, however, this also is reminiscent of Mori himself, who will be acting in an unprofessional way (trying to get a “young” girl to please get some clothes on) but have to cover that up once someone walks in. 

But this isn’t just a mafia thing! Fukuzawa does it too, and we can see it in the way that he wants to make the right kind of responses, but if he weren’t director, he’d just go with the flow more. With how he wants to just go out places and pet cats, but has to put up this image of the dignified director that people can rely on. 

In Chuuya’s case, I think it’s something he needs to work on, so that he can become a self-assured and confident adult, but in general it’s just... adulthood, to need to look professional while you’re doing your job. The problem with some of these characters is that their job is so closely tied with who they are.

To summarise:

Chuuya wanted the respect of being a leader even as he was denied personal agency while in the Sheep, and was given the ability to work toward that respect and earn it from others on his entry into the mafia. Mori’s words showed him what he lacked, but also highlighted what hadn’t been given to him before.

Chuuya’s place is in the mafia as it is where his talents lie, but more importantly it is most likely where he would feel the least out of place, and the least uncomfortable by peoples’ assumptions that he “should” act or think in a certain way. Just as in many ways he is seen as “too nice and kind” for the mafia, so would he be seen as “too violent, cruel, and callous” to work in the light, within the law, and his continued ability to stay loyal to the mafia without discomfort for what they do would make it impossible for him to work for the ADA.

[asuka--langley--soryu]

hey do you know any blogs/sites etc that „explain” nge episode by episode? not the plot but rather the symbolism and themes

oh man anon I dearly wish I could say yes but unfortunately if something like this exists then I don’t know about it :/ instead what I can offer are some links to some meta/analysis/essays and hopefully that might help or at least give you a place to start? 

so there is always the evageeks wiki which can provide a basic amount of info on some thematic elements, and at the very least is reasonably good for lore explanations. I feel kind of eyeroll about evageeks and their general community perspective, but if you need a good jumping off point i think this might be useful for that. 

when i first started this blog there was a user called ritsumaya who put out some realllyyy interesting and in-depth meta. they deleted a while ago unfortunately but i believe most of their stuff as been archived at @ritsumaya2. None of the posts are tagged or organized in any way so it’s a little hard to navigate but worth perusing/searching through imo.

Someone did reupload their analysis of asuka specifically in a slightly more readable format so I’ll link that here separately. I 100% rec checking it out, it has some really really good thoughts on her character and informed a lot of my own interpretations back in the day. I do think they go a little too into the pathologizing angle which (if it wasn’t clear from my last post lol) I don’t agree with and largely ignore, but, aside from that, I think it’s super interesting. 

in terms of other blogs, off the top of my head qmisato and adamworu put out good meta p often and also have organized tagging systems, so you might want to look at their stuff. i’m gonna glance through my archive and tag some of the meta ive rb-ed in the past, and will try to consistently tag it from now on so as to have somewhere to reference in the future. Plus I probably should have been doing that already but im like yknow a big carnival idiot and consistently cannot keep organized no matter how potentially beneficial it would be for me :) 

There are some papers on nge in my thesis sources drive, so if youre looking for something a lil more academic/theory based then you could check those out. Specifically I recommend the Ortega and Napier essays.  Link for that’s here. 

theres def other blogs on here im forgetting, as well as just other sources in general. pls feel free to drop recs in the replies if you have em!! this was just the stuff i could pull from the top of my head/knew where to find so its by no means comprehensive and i am by no means the like end all be all in nge meta archiving. also, as usual, i’m not sanctioning 100% of every word written in the things I rec, so dont hold me to their opinions. 

i hope this helps at least a little bit! 

(ps: ik reddit has analysis threads or whatever but i’ve never read anything on there id recommend so ymmv on that front ) 

(pps: also ive never watched any of those youtube video essays or whatever about nge and never will [im just like instinctively repelled by anime youtubers that arent miss watchmojo dot com top 10 list lady] so i have literally no idea about their quality on any level. ik they exists and maybe could be helpful to you if you prefer a non-written resource?) 

[gammija]

Does 170 confirm Martin’s domain?

I know, i know, it’s been 5 weeks since MAG170, and meta/discourse online currently moves at the breakneck speed of one week/episode... But! recently while discussing tma theories with people the idea came up that 170 definitively confirmed Martin’s domain as the Lonely.

I don’t think that that’s the case however, so I wanted to write this post to explain why I think that.

(Not primarily to convince anyone that I’m right, though that’d be a nice bonus ;). More just so I have all my thoughts down in one spot that I can link to in the future, hah. Also, this post is not necessarily arguing that Martin’s domain is definitely not the Lonely - though that, to be fair, is my bias - only that 170 didn’t confirm it one way or the other.)

[Spoilers up to 175] Okay so

there are a few other assumptions/theories about domains and avatars I’m using for the final conclusion above! So I’ll first try to prove those, and then show how 170 does or doesn’t fit them.

1) Martin actually has a domain, because the question was raised and left unanswered in 167:

Martin: “What about me?” Jon: “Would you… like me to -” Martin: “No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

If we aren’t meant to wonder which it is, I’m sure there would’ve been some sort of answer or guess from either Jon or Martin. It would’ve been easy to have either of them suggest the Lonely (or even another Fear), or to simply say that Jon only meant full avatars, and Martin doesn’t have one. So from a meta standpoint, the lack of an answer makes it more likely that there is one, and it’s important.

2) Saying that a domain is “[Someone’s] domain” requires that someone to be (on their way to becoming) an avatar of that fear. This is the only way that the word has been used in relation to people in s5, otherwise it’s used as [Fear’s] domain. Never is the domain the property of the victims.

167: Jon tells us explicitly that domain means “the place that feeds us”, and that Gertrude would “have resigned herself to - ruling her domain.” 168: “This is Oliver Banks’ domain.”  

3) An avatar, while they might be conflicted about their actions, does genuinely like some essential aesthetic of their Fear and indulging in it. That’s shown in basically all the known avatars’ statements, and in 111: 

Gerard: “Do you like [compelling people]? Jon : “[...] Yes, I… I suppose I do.”

The only avatars that don’t follow this are Michael and Gertrude. But then again, the Distortion is a unique case - it existed long before it became Michael and was forced to become him, and was forcibly taken over by Helen, who does seem to follow the trend. Gertrude, I admit I have less of a good defence for, though she’s also just canonically hard to read in general - and it is implied that she’s not (as good) an avatar to the Eye as Jon because she doesn’t really have an affinity for it.

The difficult thing about this one for Martin is that our only model for a full, confirmed Lonely avatar is Peter. We definitely know that he enjoys being lonely - but it’s hard to say for certain whether that’s a prerequisite of going full avatar, or just. peter.

4) Avatars enjoy a position of privilege in their domains. That’s evidenced in basically every domain for which we’ve seen the avatar; Jude wasn’t stuck burning, Jared wasn’t stuck in the ground, Simon wasn’t fleeing ‘Junior’ or stuck in it.

(I realize I’m talking a lot about specific word choices and such here, so, sorry for being pedantic :’D But I’m not going to stop, since in my experience, with tma it pays off to be pedantic. (‘why hasnt any ritual ever succeeded’, ‘why are people being weird about Elias being head of the institute’, ‘hey if you count jons scars he's almost got one from every fear lol’, etc are all questions based on small details that turned out to have legitimate answers. specificity matters.)(... Excluding timeline stuff))

Regarding 170

So, combining those three, if the Lonely really is Martin’s domain and he's partaking in it, I'd expect him to have a position higher than those of the other victims, and to be somewhat enjoying himself (even though he’d definitely hate it if he were) or at least not dislike the core idea of the Lonely.

There certainly are a few parts in the episode in which Martin admits to not finding this domain so bad: 

“Sometimes I wonder if I forget things on purpose. Easier not to think about them, I guess. Easier to just let them… slip away. They can’t hurt you if you don’t think about them; they can’t shout at you or call you names.”

“I’m losing myself, and I - and I don’t know if I mind? Maybe I deserve it. So much of what’s behind the fog hurts. So much of it just makes me wanna curl up with pain and embarrassment and - Maybe the fog’s here because I want it here.”

“Honestly, I - I wanted to believe it.”

“It’s comforting here, leaving all those - painful memories behind.”

“It’s the Lonely, John. It’s me.”

… Except that almost all of those are followed up immediately with refutals: 

This one peters (hah) off into Martin panicking over forgetting his Mom’s face, and saying he shouldn’t be there.

“Maybe I asked the fog to come. No. No, no - no, no, no, that’s not true!”

“I wanted to believe it. But I didn’t.”

“But - It’s not a good comfort, it’s - i,it’s the kind that makes you fade, makes you dim and - distant.

“Not anymore.” “- No. No, not anymore.”

On top of that, there are all the times that Martin reiterates that he doesn’t like this place, or being alone in general:

This, This isn’t my house! [..] I don’t like it here.

I don’t like it. Why does my house smell like that, I - It can’t be my house. No, no, no; my, my - My house doesn’t smell like this! My house smells… s-smells different.

I shouldn’t be alone; there should be people!

I don’t know why I’d decorate my house like this; I don’t like it! I like - (breaking off) Wh- I, It’s not my home; it can’t be. [...] I don’t like it here.

Where am I? This isn’t right; I shouldn’t be here.

I don’t like this place.

It certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of place that somebody called Martin would live. Martin. It feels like a small name. One that wants to be warm and happy. Not like here.

[The entirety of his last paragraph before Jon finds him]

I should add that a lot of Lonely victims (13, 48, 108) like their solitude, so Martin occasionally liking being alone doesn’t preclude him from being a victim.

Furthermore, Martin doesn’t seem at all to be in any better position than any of the other Lonely victims: 

“They’re all trying to remember. T-To recall, to picture someone, anyone who loves them, and their hearts are all full of fear. Afraid that those people are gone forever. That maybe - maybe they never existed at all.”

That describes Martin’s experience this episode almost exactly, except that he hasn’t been there as long, and has both an Eye avatar and some tape recorders looking out for him.

He doesn’t sound to me like an equivalent to other avatars in their domains: he sounds like the victim.

Other counter arguments: 

I’ve seen the argument that the privilege Martin gets here, is the knowledge of all those other victims.That him knowing that they exist, and what they’re struggling with, proves that it’s his domain. Honestly though, I think that’s not a very strong argument, seeing as he explicitly says he’s seen them, which makes sense as he’s been able to see victims in other domains as well. And describing their experience isn’t that hard either, seeing as he’s just had a similar one (and has prior experience with the Lonely to boot). So there’s an easy explanation for how he knew this, without the Lonely having to be his domain.

There’s also the idea that in 170, “house” is a metaphor for domain, and since Martin occasionally thinks that it’s his house, that means that it’s his domain. Two problems there:

he spends just as much time saying that it’s not his house.

the (other) victim he runs into also thinks it’s their house at first.

So while I think the idea has merit as an analysis, it still doesn’t definitively prove Martin’s domain one way or the other.

*DEEP INHALE*

SO! In the end, 170 to me is anything but conclusive about what Martin’s domain is, and hopefully at least was able to show why I think that way. TL;DR: 

If the Lonely were Martin’s domain, he should be like the other avatars in theirs, not stuck in it as a victim;

Martin in 170 seems to be a victim;

Therefore 170 doesn’t confirm that the Lonely is his domain.

[baya-ni]

Hi I don’t know if you’re still invested in sk8 but I wanted to ask your opinion on Adam and his relationship with Tadashi after ep12 (not in a ship way, just their feelings and interactions in general). I’m only here because someone’s been trying to pick a fight and pointing to your meta, so I read them (and I think there’s merit to them) but they’re all pre ep12. So if you don’t mind, did ep12 change your opinion on anything and why/why not?

Feel free to ignore this if you don’t feel like answering and have a nice day!

Gosh, it's been long time since I've thought about Sk8. As is probably obvious from my meta, I was writing about the show as the episodes were airing, so without that 'big picture' perspective after the finale, a lot of my first impressions and theories about where the show was going turned out to be wrong.

So, have my opinions about Adam and Tadashi changed since ep12? Yes, big time. Mainly, I've learned to just chill the fuck out.

I've taken the opportunity to read through most of your #clownon masterlist and it's been very enlightening. My personal favorite is the BPD analysis, which makes sooo much sense for ADAM. And I also liked your ask responses regarding consent, how ADAM seeks enthusiastic participation from the other party (whether that be Tadashi or Langa), and how his insults and degradation towards Tadashi are a misguided attempt at provoking that participation.

I don't hate ADAM anymore, nor his relationship with Tadashi. I'm a bit disappointed with the way the season ended in regards to these two, mainly because I thought it was rushed and I would've liked to see where the showrunners would have taken their relationship had they been given more episodes to do so. I still think their relationship is pretty disturbed and definitely not one people should seek to emulate in real life, but it's very complex and that's what makes it interesting to watch and analyze.

I'm still pretty proud of my analysis of ADAM and Tadashi's relationship in regards to their class imbalance, but stepping back, my analysis would only really have solid ground to stand on if the Sk8 was meant to be an angsty "somewhat realistic" romantic or political drama but it's not, it's a show about skateboarding for christs sake. I think my interpretation that ADAM preys on Tadashi's guilt is a valid one, BUT I think that your interpretation that it's ADAM's way of goading Tadashi to step up is ALSO highly plausible and a sound argument. Idk, I just think that their dynamic is fun to analyze, as long as we keep perspective and remember that these "debates" are ultimately of little consequence, because this is a work of fiction- these characters aren't real, the violence and toxic relationships aren't real, this show has no actual bearing on the real world.

But to bring this back around to your original question, what really changed my opinion towards ADAM was casting David Wald as his english dub actor, someone whose work I have deep admiration for and whose casting somewhat softened my feelings towards the character. In an interview about his interpretation of ADAM, Wald said this:

“When I was about 14 years old, I’d grown up in Texas, and I moved because my dad got a new job to Indianapolis, Indiana, and this is where I started doing theatre furiously because there was a really healthy theatre community—in Indianapolis, of all places! And that was when, you know, up to that point I had grown up a very—a little gay boy in Texas in the fucking 80s, so, like, back then we didn’t to look to at all. There were no models, there were no representatives; if I saw myself depicted in a film it was like, you know, a villain or some hitchhiker wearing a silver lamé blouse and carrying a butcher knife in his purse, right. Like that’s as good as it got, so we didn’t have models—not in film or in art or in life. And when I moved to Indianapolis, and I started doing theatre I was surrounded by some of my favorite creatures on god’s earth: the theatre queen. They were everywhere around me and they were outrageous individuals; every one of them was the queen of the stage when they were on it, and they were just so animated and so unapologetic about themselves. And so Adam is very much pulled from certain individuals of that time and place, and I think it’s one of the things I think that is sort of misunderstood about Adam is his—like everybody sort of criminalizes him about his hangup about Langa and these boys. The thing is it’s the same thing as what happened to me, fourteen-year-old Dave. Some of those theatre queens said shit to me that you would not believe, but it was kind of part of a mentoring process. They didn’t mean it, they didn’t intend to “take me home and show me the way,” but they toyed with me in this way in this way because it was sort of like they were demonstrating to me how to live an unapologetic gay life, you know. And I think there’s metaphor in there for Adam, you know, you’ve got this inference, and you’ll find it in any sports anime coming from Japan; they will sort of work this really deep closeness, this attachment between their main characters, and it’s kind of part of the sportsman journey in Japanese….there’s a lot of gay analogue in these shows, these boys coming into their own and finding out who they are…. And Adam is not perfect, and he’s certainly not an example of how to live your life, but he definitely is unapologetically himself, and he’s loudly unapologetically himself to these friends and compatriots and peers of his that share this community with him, and I think that it’s not about trying to seduce these boys, it’s about showing them ‘listen, I know what you’re hiding and it gets better.’”

And this served as a really important reminder to me that sometimes we all just need to log off Tumblr for a moment and listen to the actual real life humans to whom this show and these characters mean something. A big argument against ADAM is that the portrayal of his character is the trope-y gay coded villian, thus his character is homophobic. But here is someone telling us how much love he has put into this character, drawing from his own experiences as a gay man, and how ADAM comes from, of all places, empowerment.

So in conclusion, yes my opinion toward ADAM and Tadashi's relationship has drastically changed since the season ended. I share your frustrations with fans for oversimplifying this complex dynamic by throwing around buzzwords like "pedophile", "rapist", "abuser", etc etc etc... In that regard, I hope you're taking a lot of mental breaks from the internet, deleting mean asks, blocking people as needed, and all that good stuff.

Take care friend!