#rb season 2

[dgct2]

Want to try being normal together?

Rookie Blue 2.13

[r4tfromm3rcury]

Yeah toxic yuri political intrigues and murder is cool or whatever BUT WHERE IS MY BOY?????? SUNFYRE??????? (design based on his book self)

[lordgrimwing]

just saw a post saying Charles Edwards is 'too old' to play Celebrimbor. That is entirely wrong.

[oldbookshop]

saw a post about how maggie has presumably been acquainted with aziraphale for her entire life (can't find the post now ugh), so i'd like to add some headcanons to this:

maggie would wander into the shop as a kid, and although aziraphale is not particularly nice to his customers and generally disapproving of kids in the shop, he's always been nice to maggie and let her browse as she pleased

she once asked Mr. Fell what "A.Z." stands for. having never been asked that question before, he panicked and said his first name was "anthony"

pre-teen maggie asked him if he had any books where two girls are in a relationship. given that he primarily carries books that are quite old, all he could come up with was the well of loneliness (not particularly age appropriate), so he ordered a large set of sapphic books that a 12 year old would enjoy and let her have them for free

teenage maggie introduced her first girlfriend to Mr Fell before her parents, not because she felt extremely close to him or anything, mostly to use him as a practice run for her parents knowing she would get a good reaction (she did, in fact, get a good reaction)

maggie really wants to know what anti-aging cream he uses

[sualne]

what have we done?

[polineshvets]

update: okay, i would never have thought that rw&rb has SO many fans

[icyrambles]

hi friendly reminder that everything said in this post is my personal opinion. i actually really enjoyed earthspark season 1 and i was really really excited for season 2. i do not expect a piece of children’s media to be a perfectly written masterpiece but good lord was the bar low. anyways extreme spoilers below the cut. proceed with caution :3

i do not think it an untrue statement to say that the writing quality went down significantly between seasons. the plot, while not perfect in season 1, was far more fleshed out and actually took a whole season's worth to complete. meanwhile we had a plotline with much higher stakes get finished within the span of about a third of what the first season got. additionally while many of the episodes had some sort of connection to the wider goal of this batch of episodes, that being reclaiming the emberstone shards, many of the episodes did not focus specifically on the emberstone itself, instead sidelining it to a background plot or merely having characters randomly finding bits and pieces of it just lying about.

i would not think this a bad thing had the episodes not felt so rushed. starscream's plotline of obtaining all the emberstone shards should've taken the whole season, not just 9 episodes. the rushed writing reeks of corporate interference and slashed budgets and i have nothing but praise for the writers who scrambled to try and salvage a story that should've gotten 1, if not 2 seasons for a well rounded plot. however this does not stop me from wishing that they had tried to focus on creating a plotline that felt at least marginally more connected and tonally sound

it's an issue that i noticed throughout the first season where the dialogue and general morals of the show seem to be marketed towards a much younger audience and then the actual content of the show is not at all suited for children. obviously rampant child endangerment is a common theme in a lot of children's media (steven universe, she-ra, literally every tf show to ever feature a child character, etc...) but it's very strange to me that so few of the adult characters seem to care or understand how much danger mo and robby are in whenever they are part of an active combat scene.

neither dot nor alex seem all that concerned that their literal children are fighting alien robots who are more than twice their size and could easily maim or kill them without much trouble. obviously they have plot armour because they are the main characters but even then that's not a very good excuse when it's been established within the show that the characters are in highly dangerous situations that could get them killed and yet mo and robby's parents simply stand by and let their very young, elementary/middle school aged kids throw themselves into the line of danger.

and it's specifically the tone issue when it comes to the violence. if the combat in earthspark was treated as though no one could get hurt seriously and everyone would be okay, like it is in many prior transformers shows (like G1, TFA, and cyberverse) then i wouldn't have any issues with this. but it's not. fighting the decepticons is treated like it's a majour risk and that mo and robby could die every single time they leave the house to go on patrol. but their parents, beyond a few verbal warnings, do not do anything to keep their kids out of the way. they do not question why their children must be the ones to fight the decepticons, instead of leaving it up to the much more capable autobots.

it was bad in the last season but at the very least most of the fights then were simply due to the maltos being caught up in combat they weren't actively seeking out. but now, they are actively hunting down and searching for pieces of the emberstone that frequently lead them into situations that could risk their lives.

another issue i have with the tones of the show is how it treats injuries. hashtag seemingly gets very badly injured in the first episode because of aftermath and we, as the audience, are supposed to be very worried for her. however this lasts for all of about 10 minutes before she's back on her pedes and rolling around just fine, which once again leads to the confusing question of whether we're supposed to care if characters get injured. 

in transformers animated as an example, i was never particularly worried when characters got injured because of the allspark key. it was functionally a fix all tool used to repair any cybertronian character who got injured. therefore, whenever there was a majour battle, i never was in disbelief when a character would get seriously injured because it was previously established that the characters have a tool that can fix them should they require such drastic medical care. and it even tied into ratchet’s character arc and him learning to trust newer forms of technology.

wheeljack is another example of tonal dissonance when it comes to injuries. he gets stabbed in the face by a weapon called the cyberslayer. he then passes out and his optics turn completely black. we see dot grabbing him and looking very worried and then we don't get to see him again until the very last episode (which takes place two episodes after when he first gets injured) where he only appears for a split second fighting nova storm. no one mentions the fact that he got grievously injured, not even characters who saw him get hurt, like twitch, who has a strong emotional attachment to him and should likely care about him getting injured. 

mind you beyond a cybertronian’s frame going completely grey, their optics are how their physical and emotional state are often portrayed to most animated audiences. it’s not like in the comics where they can be covered in gore and lose limbs without consequence of scaring a young child. so seeing wheeljack’s optics go completely black and having people be worried about him and then never mentioning him again for two fucking episodes is really poor writing. 

and speaking of characters getting grievously injured. let me talk about spitfire and aftermath.

i do not enjoy the fact that they were killed. in fact i am appalled that they took two characters who were maybe less than a month old and then had them killed in what is to be implied to be an extremely painful manner. i’m unsure as to why the terrans are treated as though they are fully grown cybertronians when they are clearly not. they may have fully developed frames but they have the minds and personalities of children. additionally the way the chaos terrans are treated makes me deeply uncomfortable considering their age and the way they were brought into the world.

it is implied that the emberstone brings terrans into existence depending on the situation and in both cases of a chaos terran being created, that situation is combat. aftermath was created when breakdown fumbled an emberstone shard and it landed in a puddle of water. he was then immediately hit by a truck and began attacking the rest of the terrans. spitfire is much the same, being created when a shard of the emberstone was tossed into a thunderstorm while twitch was being chased by laserbeak. 

the way that the maltos talk about the chaos terrans, addressing them as evil and corrupted versions of the other terrans is deeply unsettling to me considering season 1’s themes of acceptance and understanding for those around you. it’s very weird to have jawbreaker go from being buddy-buddy with aftermath in one episode and then upon meeting spitfire in the next episode, distrusting her. obviously aftermath did betray jawbreaker’s trust by stealing the supply of cave water, but it feels incredibly out of character to see jawbreaker, who is friendly, kind, and unrelentingly positive, suddenly stick his nose up at spitfire, an individual he has never met before in his life. 

i’m aware that the terrans are proven right about aftermath and spitfire but it’s so gross to see characters who are less than a year old get thrown under the same bus as the decepticons who have committed literal war crimes. 

and then there’s the fact that they were killed by starscream. now to be clear, i did not expect starscream to be a good person in this season. i was tentatively hopeful that he would get a redemption arc of some kind considering megatron’s whole deal, but i was fully expecting him to be the main antagonist of season 2. however… it feels bizarrely out of place to see starscream quite literally murder two newborn babies and then not have said babies get revived at the end of the season. 

aftermath and spitfire are dead. just straight up gone. and it’s a waste of potential in my opinion. 

these are two characters who could have gone from side antagonists to genuine fan favourites given enough time and proper development. that’s what i though their plotline would be to be honest; i assumed that we were going to see them grow and develop over the course of the season (not just the first nine episodes) with the two of them eventually leaving the decepticons to join the autobot side. 

instead they are murdered in front of four main characters and banished the realm of never having had existed once again. there is the possibility of them being revived but i am highly unsure of that being the case considering how their existence sort of depends on the emberstone being shattered into several pieces. 

additionally, going back to starscream, i honestly do not want him to get a redemption arc now. there is no way in my mind that the writers can make him a good guy after he murdered two children. like, zero chance. unless they just bumped it under the rug, it’s fucking impossible to go “yeah starscream, the guy who killed two babies and then tried to destroy an entire town full of people, yeah he’s a good guy now!” 

that just would be tone deaf.

okay i’m moving on to the various plotholes and open ended questions that have been left on the floor now because if i keep thinking about how the chaos terrans were treated it’ll make me sadder

so first big question. why are the cons bad now? no genuinely, i would like to know why exactly the decepticons suddenly turned evil. the excuse of “oh that’s just how cons are” is not an excuse, it’s a fucking shame explanation that goes entirely against the themes of the first season. like even a fucking line of just “oh we tried peace but like many of our past ceasefires our ideologies just clashed too much” or something along those lines. 

and it’s been a whole year since season 1. something must have happened for the decepticons to have suddenly flipped sides on a dime. it’s so weird to me seeing a character like breakdown finally have the opportunity for something tangentially related to peace and then become a con once again despite having zero reason to actually stay with them. 

like ghost is gone (which is another thing i’ll bring up later) so why wouldn’t he chill with the autobots where he’s not in active combat and being starved for resources. like i can understand soundwave, shockwave, and starscream leaving considering their ties to megatron, and novastorm and skywarp leaving because of starscream seems about right. 

but swindle? hardtop? the insecticons? why the fuck do they care about the decepticons? surely those individuals don’t have the same loyalty to the cons as the others? and it doesn’t help that the insecticons get no lines this season and swindle and hardtop get like 6 collectively. we don’t learn anything about them or their motives. we can’t deduce anything because the narrative doesn’t care enough about them to actually explain or show why they’d choose to stick with the decepticons over the autobots. 

and starscream’s motives are another really weird thing. we’re told it’s because he wants to build a new cybertron but that feels so wildly out of character when he’s shown to generally just dislike megatron and his rule. why would he want anything to do with earth? 

“oh well shockwave hasn’t found anything that says cybertron is still around” 

well he hasn’t found anything that says cybertron is gone either. like one blown up spacebridge would not fucking explode an entire planet. and it would make far more sense for starscream to be building a new spacebridge powered by the emberstone instead. and the decepticons being the antagonists instead because of them wanting to go home quicker and not wanting to be patient and resorting to violence. 

like you’re telling me that shockwave couldn’t build a fucking space bridge when agent croft and mandroid could. pathetic. he would probably do it faster and with better materials because he knows what he’s doing. 

additionally if we got a space bridge up and working that would mean getting to see cybertron which would provide a lot of really good character building for the terrans! like it would be very fun to see them getting to explore and grapple with their cybertronian side!

ignoring the whole mess that is decepticons are the bad guys again because of “reasons”, i wanna talk about the carnival episode

now overall i actually enjoyed this episode. like beyond the whole crush plot not really being my thing (which is more a result of me not enjoying romantic subplots within kids media to begin with which is in it of itself just a result of me being aroace and disliking unnecessary romance in media) i actually really liked this episode! i enjoyed seeing the terrans interacting in an environment that isn’t a fight scene. and the use of their bond in regards to robby’s crush is actually a really cute concept that i felt was well executed. 

absolutely zero thoughts on robby’s crush. other than they both deserve jail for that food crime abomination of a funnel cake. but to each their own i suppose. 

but now comes the questions… what the fuck was up with cosmos man?!

from his dialogue about not knowing that megatron was an autobot we can assume that he’s been trapped there for minimum of like… 40 years give or take. and that’s a fucking horrifying thing to think about. he’s trapped in his altmode for decades without any way to communicate with his allies all while this random human uses him as a method of making money. 

i don’t particularly know how those altmode devices work, but surely his spark signature would still be recognisable correct? did the other autobots just assume that he was dead? did they not care? were ghost preventing the autobots from rescuing him? 

so many questions that will probably not get answered because having weird al voice him probably increased his budget several times over. 

oh and also are we going to learn where fairemestro got his tech from? did he just get it all from swindle over the years, that would seem the most logical, but also maybe he was working with ghost, that could be an interesting plot threat if the writers decide to bring him back. 

the quintessons are another group that leaves me with a lot of questions. like clearly they’re being set up as the main villains of the rest of the season but it’s so weird to me that they’re not set up earlier than that. 

why on earth make starscream the villain if you’re going to just get rid of him nine episodes in. surely it would’ve been easier to simply dedicate the time and energy into building up the quintessons in the first batch of episodes, with the decepticons as minour supporting characters along with the autobots and then have the rest of the season be about fighting the quints. 

it feels so oddly structured and rushed. 

i understand that time constraints and budget cuts most likely caused them to cram everything into season 2 because season 3 might not be a guarantee but considering how big of a threat the quintessons are likely going to be, having them get their own season to fully realise their goals and/or plans is a better writing decision than a singular episode of setup that immediately got forgotten for the rest of the episode batch. 

and okay, personal bias here. the quintesson executioner model was ugly. it was weird and it was gross and it’s fucking limbs made of jelly energon was just not it man. like give that thing some tentacles with blades on the end. not whatever the fuck that creature was. 

and also small tangent, i don’t like quintus prime. i do not like the fact that he enlisted two literal children to do his bidding and then having the writing team puppet said children around saying “yes quintus prime is our friend :)” while he has done nothing to earn their respect or trust. he’s a fucking dick who is leaving his mess for two kids to clean up. 

mo saying to the executioner “but quintus is my friend” pisses me off so much because he’s really not. he appeared in one vision for about 3 minutes and in that time he got angry at mo for being scared about her brother being in mortal danger. that’s not friend behaviour. 

additionally alex’s nonchalance about the quintesson executioner is so strange to me. he literally saw his probably 9-10 year old daughter getting hunted down and just doesn’t do anything afterwards to ensure that it won’t happen again. no sitting down with dot and saying “honey maybe we shouldn’t let our children do this anymore. it’s clearly dangerous.” nothing of that sort??? really??? do neither of these parents care about their children now???

season one dorothy malto would never do this. she would be furious that her children are regularly throwing themselves into life or death situations. 

not to mention the fact that these kids are still in school, actively!!! mo finding the quintus temple is literally only because she has to do a history project on witwicky, meaning she’s actively in school during the season. so that means that not only are these kids in school during the day, but they’re also training, going on patrol, and fighting beings roughly 2-3x their size on the daily????

how are they not exhausted physically and mentally? how have their teachers not noticed something is off? do they just not have any connections with their classmates? do they merely just go to school, go home, work, and then repeat?

this problem could be easily fixed by just saying they’re homeschooled or that it’s the summer. but nope, they’re in public school. 

okay end tangent. moving onto characters. 

i’ve already talked about the assassination of characters like dot, who is suddenly a background mom who seemingly doesn’t give a shit about her seven kids throwing themselves into life and death situations and the same goes for alex, but there was a noticeable lack of character time from pretty much every majour character from season 1. 

like bumblebee, someone who lives with the malto family and was their teacher and mentor in season 1. he’s just fucking gone for 90% of the season. he has like three total scenes and most of those are dedicated to him being comic relief. it baffles me that he’s just missing. everything from season one, his silly moments with alex, his awkward dynamic with optimus and megatron, his love and dedication with the kids is just gone. 

it breaks my heart because bumblebee was one of the highlights of season 1. he was silly, kind, caring, strong, and the perfect mix between the bumblebee’s of tfa, g1, and cyberverse. 

megatron, arcee, and grimlock also got almost no screentime. arcee and grimlock i can sort of understand because even in season 1 they were relatively minour background characters who featured in only one or two episodes… but megatron, fucking megatron, mr. i’m an autobot now. mr. i’ve changed for the better???? why is he not more prominently featured as a potential mentor for the chaos terrans. 

he of all bots would understand what they’re going through? why does he just brush off spitfire? why is he not more concerned when the chaos terrans are merely left to the side and dehumanised like the rest of the decepticons?

it’s so strange to see him become this random guy who says almost nothing and is mostly in the background when he played such a prominent role in season 1. and it’s especially weird that he’s also just okay with the terrans and malto kids collecting the emberstones by themselves. like he was very clearly protective and caring towards them in season 1 so why the sudden shift in character in season 2?

starscream is also such 180 from season 1. like did i expect him to be a perfect little angel who can do no wrong? fuck no. i was fully expecting him to be mean, ornery, and snippish when he interacted with megatron and the autobots. but to have him go from “look out for yourself” to hashtag and then straight up murder two children for a plot point that barely makes any sense is just so fucking out of line. 

i’m a firm hater of most starscream’s that are just evil guy for the sake of evil. i fucking hate what skybound did to him good lord. so to see him suddenly flip from being relatively sympathetic (i say relatively because he’s not like a good person. i fully understand that he was actively part of the group that invaded earth and probably killed a lot of humans) but having him just straight up kill two children… no man. i will not accept a redemption arc after that. 

he had so much potential to be a good character, who actively struggled with becoming a good person and dealing with his trauma in a healthy way and to see that potential get tossing into the trash just makes my blood boil. 

zero thoughts on soundwave and his team. he got like three lines and was mostly just a cardboard cutout of his season 1 self. weird that we never got to see frenzy considering laserbeak and ravage got scenes. is she just dead now? 

shockwave betraying (or at least not listening to starscream’s orders) was pretty interesting. i’m ready to see what he’s going to do in the rest of the season. then again there’s a good chance that he’ll just be cardboard cutout later on. 

skywarp and novastorm. nothing much. they’re fine. i like the few interactions they got. i enjoy the fact that skywarp is allowed to be a little stupid like her g1 counterpart and her fight scene with elita-1 was pretty nice. i’ve seen people complain that they didn’t change enough about her to justify the pronouns change but i subscribe to the notion that cybertronians do not use pronouns in the same way that humans do, so like, i don’t really give a fuck about the she/her usage. it’s a silly thing to get hung up over in my opinion. 

insecticons are nothing burger characters. swindle and hardtop are boring as hell. also someone get hardtop a new arm for fucks sake. it’s been a year. surely they could manage that. 

another dropped plot was the combining concept. like it gets put into an episode and then it gets dropped only one episode later. i honestly did not like how jawbreaker was portrayed in the episode that he features more prominently in. he’s upbeat and happy sure, but even he isn’t that emotionally dense. you’re telling me that while combined with aftermath he really couldn’t figure out why aftermath was so pissy. or that he was going to end up stealing all the cave water? really man?

additionally i’m not a massive fan of combination as a concept in tf to begin with. it feels very much like a toy marketing scheme and after idw1 i just cannot bring myself to give enough of a fuck about such things considering how massive combination was in the comics. it especially feels out of place in earthspark. i did like the scene where mo and robby devour like three plates of food after combining, that was really cute!

quite literally zero thoughts on hashtag picking out a new altmode. it was cute but it felt highly unnecessary to be perfectly honest. also i genuinely hope that her ai doesn’t turn evil like i’ve seen some people saying that it will. i prefer the interpretation that hashtag is now plural and the ai is simply her headmate. hashtag’s new model is just fine. i don’t like her helm though, it feels too naked for me. but the colours and everything else. fine. no notes. 

in terms of animation i honestly don’t have too much to say. most of the models felt oddly stiff. like the people in charge of animation didn’t get paid enough to properly emote them during scenes beyond moving their mouths and maybe stretching their eyes. (this is a gross exaggeration. there is a lot of time and effort that goes into rigging and creating 3d models and i understand that on a tight budget it’s probably very hard to try and make every character as expressive as possible.)

the fight scenes felt so weirdly rushed and/or oddly choreographed. like it might just be a me thing but most of the scenes felt either too slow or too fast with the rare exception (i like spitfire and twitch’s scenes. they were good)

aftermath’s model is overall pretty good. besides his helm. it feels a bit too small. 

already stated my opinions on the quintesson executioner model above. it’s shit. i don’t like it. 

terratronus is honestly pretty good. the detailing is nice. don’t like her glorification of quintus prime though. like it’s in character but that doesn’t mean i have to like it. she wasn’t around long enough to make a big enough impression on me. she feels like a lore exposition dump and that’s about it. 

alright this thing is getting too long. like 4k words long. before i go, let me say something. 

i did actually enjoy watching season 2. despite my paragraphs and paragraphs of criticism and questions and annoyances with so much of the season, i think it’s perfectly fine by itself. but in comparison to season 1, it’s a poor fucking sequel. it fails on almost every level and i think more people should be more comfortable with admitting that it’s just very bad. that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it, that doesn’t mean you can’t like what it did. i just think that people shouldn’t sweep the massive issues these episodes have with pacing, dialogue, and animation simply because some parts of it were decent. 

i’m probably going to watch the rest of the season when the episodes drop (purely because prowl is there tbh. if he’s there at all.)

[nocturnebby]

finally finished the false drawing! takes place waay back when the bridge was newly built and she wasnt revealed as a escaped amnesiac

[caramel-cream50]

2023 is keeping us fed

(Honorable mentions: Loki s2 and disenchantment s5)

[codgod-moved]

FINISHED MY EMPIRES LINEUP now i can die in peace /j

i went from tallest to shortest (headcanon) and some fun facts are that false and katherine are the exact same height and lizzie is One single inch taller than fwhip. and as the scribbly little note i wrote says i had to shrink joel so that everyone else wasn’t miniscule so just ✨ imagine ✨ that he’s 11ft tall

[dgct2]

You can spin the story any way you want. Anybody who cares about you is gonna figure it out pretty fast.

Rookie Blue 2.07

[dilfmobius]

you guys want some abandoned gifs/gif sets?? i started these a few weeks ago for the one year anniversary of loki s2e5 😭

i think my concept for the set was to format all my gifs like the first one but it just wasn't working out, so i switched gears and the other 3 gifs are the result of that.

i was just struggling with what kind of fonts i wanted and how to format the text, and then i wasn't happy with the blending, and it just turned into one of those things where the more i looked at them and the more i edited them, the more i was like. ew. sdfhgsfdf

i don't think they're Bad Gifs, i was very pleased with the idea (i made another 4 base gifs without the text ffs), but i just lost steam. maybe i'll finish the set at some point, but rn i've decided to finally start my loki + primadonna by marina gifset after putting that off for months LOL

anyway just wanted to put these here because i'm still proud of them and i hope you all like them too, even if their full set might never be released 😭💖

[jelliebeanbitch]

hey why do we always draw caitlyn so that she looks skinny as fuck? like ridiculously skinny? like no internal organs skinny? yes i know she’s skinny in the show but that’s never stopped tumblr fanartists before!! i feel like it’s getting more and more exaggerated to the point of feeling weird and beauty-standard-y and unrealistic. we know that vi would kiss a caitlyn with a little bit (or a lot) of tummy !!!!

[oldbookshop]

Very excited to post the work I collaborated with @azirafag on for the Mini Reverse Bang event by @do-it-with-style-events! I wrote the words inspired by Devin's lovely art piece, which is included in the fic.

Title: 1941, Remembered Rating: T Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Summary: Crowley tasted Aziraphale, and Aziraphale tasted Crowley, and their thoughts drifted to red wine and shades of gray, and suddenly both were reliving a night eighty-two years ago so suppressed it had nearly been forgotten.

In 1941, an angel and a demon share a bottle of wine and put on a record, but wine and music lead to dancing, and dancing just might blur the edges of their oh-so-careful arrangement more than they've ever been blurred before. In other words, something definitely happened in 1941.

[fandomcentral101]

Max Wolfe, Aki Mensies, and Audrey Hope

Gossip Girl 2021 2x01

[sentientsky]

hi!! this is a silly little Christmas ficlet i promised to @tangerine-ginger a while ago (and by "silly", i mean very very angsty! hahaha. i am incapable of writing fluff, it seems). sorry it took so long, btw; i got distracted, but i managed to throw it together tonight! :-)

The view from Heaven isn’t so bad, if you know where to look. The globe that sits in the foyer is nice enough. But if you, like Aziraphale, happen to be the Supreme Archangel of Heaven…well then, that comes with a couple of choice benefits. One of these benefits happens to be the ability to open a window’s view into various corners of the universe—to tear a hole through the side of the silver sheet between worlds and peer through, like a bird skimming the length of a wave with its wings. In this story, however, there is no wave; no ocean or seagull feather kissing the bright edge of seafoam. No, in this story, there’s just an angel and a demon, both holding bloodied wounds, pretending the ichor isn’t soaking their clothes silver-gold with the shape of want. That their hands aren’t shaking. That the ground has felt entirely solid since that moment on the street with the lift and the car and the wall he built between them.

Aziraphale leans forward. The gap between realms opens into the unsteady kaleidoscopic sway of downtown Soho. He adjusts the corner of his collar. He watches, and he aches. —

In the bustle and sway of Soho’s beating heart, Crowley finds himself unsteady under the heat of iridescent lights. Each Christmas, the West End of London had opted for large, glittering installations—models of whales and fish and seahorses, all lit up from within like glowworms trapped in jars. Even now, a jellyfish sways, soft pink and faintly clinking in the night, like a vaguely sentient thing. It’s surreal, really, the buzz of lights and the onslaught of holiday shoppers making it feel nearly claustrophobic. Crowley shivers and adjusts the cuffs of his blazer. His coat does little to keep the cold out, his corporation all raw nerve endings and shuddering, bleeding heart. Throughout the past however many millennia, this time of year had been all soft whispers and apple cider clutched between hands; all hot breath blooming into clouds in the December chill—the indirect touch of their mingled speech; all heavenly shoulders brushing hellish ones as they teetered through cobblestoned streets, both sloshed halfway to purgatory. The lights had always felt warm and the ground had felt so solid you could never hope to fall through it. In the present moment, a child runs past, a laugh blooming in the air around them. Almost without thinking about it, the demon blesses them. The miracle, tiny as it is, blossoms into being on a metaphysical plane only he can see, and follows the child like a benevolent will-o’-the-wisp. Hell wouldn’t even notice. Heaven—the Supreme Arch-fucking-angel himself—wouldn’t notice. But he does. Aziraphale does, and he watches with breath caught and thrashing in his throat. Something deep in his chest is burning, a spitfire of grief and absence and loss. Heaven is terribly cold. And Soho, despite its billowing flashes of light and sounds of laughter, is much the same.  And with so much space between them, the night has never felt so lonely.