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Latest Posts by lavendersourphantom - Page 3
snow queen Betty au where she puts on the crown instead of Simon, but instead of chasing her beloved away and having him jump through to the future a thousand years later, she freezes him in a spire of ice.
she doesn’t remember freezing him. Betty thinks that Simon ran away because he finally realised that she was too gung-ho, too reckless, too much. she never considers that maybe, he’s still here.
somewhere over the course of the mushroom war and onwards, Betty becomes the Snow Queen and the Snow Queen only retains one single purpose: rather than the Ice King’s goal of finding a princess to love him, the Snow Queen is looking for her Prince, and this time, she knows he’s out there somewhere. she doesn’t want a prince, she wants her Prince. she’s broken into countless castles, searched all across the land, kidnapped countless people to interrogate, but the answer always comes up the same: no Prince anywhere to be found.
he isn’t dead, and she knows he isn’t. the Snow Queen would know if something happened to her Prince. right?
and somewhere in a deep cave, hidden amongst the ruins of what used to be a human city, sunk deep beneath the earth after its fall, a spire of ice is waiting, with a single man still standing inside.
———————————————————————
A thousand years after its creation, the spire is broken by a human boy, a yellow dog, and a vampire queen wandering through the nearby dungeons for fun, and for the first time in a millennium, Simon Petrikov is awake.
A Comprehensive Taxonomy of Tumblr Sexyman, presented with the help of the esteemed Doctor Simon Petrikov
Type 1: Wholesome Nerd
Type 2A: Sweet Middle-Aged Dad
Type 2B: Deeply Fucked Up and Traumatized Middle-Aged Dad
Type 3: Silly Little Weirdo Who is Only Appealing Because He's Deeply Miserable in an Extremely Relatable Way
Type 4: Dramatic Evil Bastard in a Fancy Suit
Type 5: Awful Fucked Up Creature
Type 6: Skeleton
I had the great pleasure of designing/animating a bunch of 3D stuff for the last two episodes of Fionna and Cake! It was a joy to work with this low-poly adventure game style. Hope you all enjoyed this great show!!
I know this has been said so many times already but Ice King has one of my favorite redemption arcs in any tv show. Because it wasn’t a redemption arc at all.
He didn’t adjust himself, instead the people around him adjusted their view of him. And once they understood him, and once he felt understood, he didn’t feel like he needed to take as many drastic measures to have interaction with others. He didn’t need to kidnap people because people started wanting to hang out with him. Thats just such a brilliant and beautiful twist on the villain to hero trope.
Simon Petrikov is truly the fucking character of all time. He’s autistic. He’s a wifeguy. He collects antiques. He survived a nuclear war. He’s a single father. He turned himself into the truman show. He’s a USB drive that stores fanfiction for a god. He’s a butch lesbian. He’s suicidal. He spent 1000 years isolated in a cursed state of existence that robbed him of his agency his autonomy his sanity and when he was finally freed he learned that everyone preferred him when he was like that. He’s nonbinary. He was keeping a primordial god of destruction as a pet and didn’t even realise. He smokes weed. He’s tearing the space-time continuum asunder to see the love of his life one last time. He has a massive bubble butt. He made a little girl cry. Everyone he cares about is living their own lives and he doesn’t want to inconvenience them. He’s transgender. He once cucked a separate god and then beat the shit out of him and threw him into space. He only drinks warm alcohol. He’s into femdom. Peace and love on the planet girl
Simon Petrikov is the character ever because he manages to exist on all sides of the tumblr sexyman spectrum
Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:
This shot through my brain like a chain of firecrackers, so, without derailing the original post, I have some THOUGHTS to add about why this concept is not only hilarious (because it is), but also...
It. It kind of fucks. Severely.
And in a delightfully Pratchett-y way, I'd dare to suggest.
I'll explain:
As inferred above, both Crowley AND Aziraphale have canonical Biblical counterparts. Not by name, no, but by function.
Crowley, of course, is the serpent of Eden.
(note on the serpent of Eden: In Genesis 3:1-15, at least, the serpent is not identified as anything other than a serpent, albeit one that can talk. Later, it will be variously interpreted as a traitorous agent of Hell, as a demon, as a guise of Satan himself, etc. In Good Omens --as a slinky ginger who walks funny)
Lesser known, at least so far as I can tell, is the flaming sword. It, too, appears in Genesis 3, in the very last line:
"So he drove out the man; and placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." --Genesis 3:24, KJV
Thanks to translation ambiguity, there is some debate concerning the nature of the flaming sword --is it a divine weapon given unto one of the Cherubim (if so, why only one)? Or is it an independent entity, which takes the form of a sword (as other angelic beings take the form of wheels and such)? For our purposes, I don't think the distinction matters. The guard at the gate of Eden, whether an angel wielding the sword or an angel who IS the sword, is Aziraphale.
(note on the flaming sword: in some traditions --Eastern Orthodox, for example-- it is held that upon Christ's death and resurrection, the flaming sword gave up it's post and vanished from Eden for good. By these sensibilities, the removal of the sword signifies the redemption and salvation of man.
...Put a pin in that. We're coming back to it.)
So, we have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword, introduced at the beginning and the end (ha) of the very same chapter of Genesis.
But here's the important bit, the bit that's not immediately obvious, the bit that nonetheless encapsulates one of the central themes, if not THE central theme, of Good Omens:
The Sword was never intended to guard Eden while Adam and Eve were still in it.
Do you understand?
The Sword's function was never to protect them. It doesn't even appear until after they've already fallen. No... it was to usher Adam and Eve from the garden, and then keep them out. It was a threat. It was a punishment.
The flaming sword was given to be used against them.
So. Again. We have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword: the inception and the consequence of original sin, personified. They are the one-two punch that launches mankind from paradise, after Hell lures it to destruction and Heaven condemns it for being destroyed. Which is to say that despite being, supposedly, hereditary enemies on two different sides of a celestial cold war, they are actually unified by one purpose, one pivotal role to play in the Divine Plan: completely fucking humanity over.
That's how it's supposed to go. It is written.
...But, in Good Omens, they're not just the Serpent and the Sword.
They're Crowley and Aziraphale.
(author begins to go insane from emotion under the cut)
In Good Omens, humanity is handed it's salvation (pin!) scarcely half an hour after losing it. Instead of looming over God's empty garden, the sword protects a very sad, very scared and very pregnant girl. And no, not because a blameless martyr suffered and died for the privilege, either.
It was just that she'd had such a bad day. And there were vicious animals out there. And Aziraphale worried she would be cold.
...I need to impress upon you how much this is NOT just a matter of being careless with company property. With this one act of kindness, Aziraphale is undermining the whole entire POINT of the expulsion from Eden. God Herself confronts him about it, and he lies. To God.
And the Serpent--
(Crowley, that is, who wonders what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway; who thinks that maybe he did a GOOD thing when he tempted Eve with the apple; who objects that God is over-reacting to a first offense; who knows what it is to fall but not what it is to be comforted after the fact...)
--just goes ahead and falls in love with him about it.
As for Crowley --I barely need to explain him, right? People have been making the 'didn't the serpent actually do us a solid?' argument for centuries. But if I'm going to quote one of them, it may as well be the one Neil Gaiman wrote ficlet about:
"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization." --Robert G. Ingersoll
The first to ask questions.
Even beyond flattering literary interpretation, we know that Crowley is, so often, discreetly running damage control on the machinations of Heaven and Hell. When he can get away with it. Occasionally, when he can't (1827).
And Aziraphale loves him for it, too. Loves him back.
And so this romance plays out over millennia, where they fall in love with each other but also the world, because of each other and because of the world. But it begins in Eden. Where, instead of acting as the first Earthly example of Divine/Diabolical collusion and callousness--
(other examples --the flood; the bet with Satan; the back channels; the exchange of Holy Water and Hellfire; and on and on...)
--they refuse. Without even necessarily knowing they're doing it, they just refuse. Refuse to trivialize human life, and refuse to hate each other.
To write a story about the Serpent and the Sword falling in love is to write a story about transgression.
Not just in the sense that they are a demon and an angel, and it's ~forbidden. That's part of it, yeah, but the greater part of it is that they are THIS demon and angel, in particular. From The Real Bible's Book of Genesis, in the chapter where man falls.
It's the sort of thing you write and laugh. And then you look at it. And you think. And then you frown, and you sit up a little straighter. And you think.
And then you keep writing.
And what emerges hits you like a goddamn truck.
(...A lot of Pratchett reads that way. I believe Gaiman when he says Pratchett would have been happy with the romance, by the way. I really really do).
It's a story about transgression, about love as transgression. They break the rules by loving each other, by loving creation, and by rejecting the hatred and hypocrisy that would have triangulated them as a unified blow against humanity, before humanity had even really got started. And yeah, hell, it's a queer romance too, just to really drive the point home (oh, that!!! THAT!!!)
...I could spend a long time wildly gesturing at this and never be satisfied. Instead of watching me do that (I'll spare you), please look at this gif:
I love this shot so much.
Look at Eve and Crowley moving, at the same time in the same direction, towards their respective wielders of the flaming sword. Adam reaches out and takes her hand; Aziraphale reaches out and covers him with a wing.
You know what a shot like that establishes? Likeness. Commonality. Kinship.
"Our side" was never just Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley says as much at the end of season 1 ("--all of us against all of them."). From the beginning, "our side" was Crowley, Aziraphale, and every single human being. Lately that's around 8 billion, but once upon a time it was just two other people. Another couple. The primeval mother and father.
But Adam and Eve die, eventually. Humanity grows without them. It's Crowley and Aziraphale who remain, and who protect it. Who...oversee it's upbringing.
Godfathers. Sort of.
today im thinking about the huge buff bread guy from kikis delivery service. highly underrated guy
I wonder, too, I wonder when Crowley is going to know. The six-espressos-in-a-big-cup protective hypervigilant Crowley. Ever circling around his angel, snapping at the slightest threat, shielding him from harm.
When is he going to know that he’s been manipulated, too?
And when is he going to know what role he himself played in Aziraphale’s decision?
There are so many things he didn’t tell Aziraphale. To protect him, to spare him, to give him time. Except, of course, all of that also meant that Aziraphale had no time and space to process them.
(And yes, there were things that Crowley could not possibly tell his angel. The cruel disdain of Gabriel’s words at Aziraphale’s execution is burned forever into Crowley’s mind; how could he have taken this dagger to Aziraphale?
Anyway, shouldn’t the fact of the execution itself be enough for Aziraphale to know?)
But Crowley’s angel is kind, is bright, never expects and is forever surprised by treachery: Rose Montgomery turning out to be a Nazi spy, a countess turning out to not be a countess. Of course Aziraphale’s sheer relief on deciding that he’s been wrong about the Metatron will be a powerful force. He wants to be aligned with something bigger than himself; he wants there to be a point.
For all of S2, Crowley deflects threats from Hell. (Aziraphale, involved? Unlikely, Crowley says with studied nonchalance. And how do you know I didn’t do that miracle?) Out of Aziraphale’s earshot, he threatens and hisses, as he has likely done for millennia. Remember Hell’s book on angels, with everything it says about Aziraphale, with instructions to ‘avvoid’ and report to Crowley? Yeah.
By the end, there are key things that Crowley hasn’t told Aziraphale: his visit to Heaven, Gabriel’s punishment, what it was that Gabriel refused to do. Yes, there were archangels in the room, watching. Yes, Crowley had rather assumed that Aziraphale is as done with Heaven as he is himself. Still, it wasn’t Crowley’s instinct to give Aziraphale all the information. And after Aziraphale’s conversation with the Metatron, Crowley was primed to go ahead with a confession, was interrupted during said confession—so in the aftershock of Aziraphale’s words, he went right back to the path he’d already committed to. Then, of course, it was too late; the pain became too much; neither of them were thinking clearly, neither of them had the time to understand.
Yes, telling Aziraphale of the danger may not have helped. Aziraphale is even better at denial than he is at forgiveness; he might have refused to see what Heaven needs him for, how they intend to keep him in line. (Also, no doubt a worrying thought for Crowley if he was conscious of it: it’s very like Aziraphale to go to Heaven to try and stop the Second Coming no matter the risk to himself.)
But the thing is, the Metatron remembers Crowley. And he must know how rash Crowley is. How impulsive, and how likely to rear up and bite when presented with an offer to be forgiven for an injustice done to him.
So yes, Crowley has been manipulated. Through Aziraphale: through his angel’s indefatigable hope, through his desire to see the best and redeem what had seemed (but surely cannot be!) irredeemable: Heaven itself. Manipulated into storming out, his heart broken, the pain of that kiss still on his lips.
Into, after so many millennia, letting Aziraphale walk straight into danger.
I wonder when Crowley is going to know.
Aziraphale shielding Crowley from water
and Crowley shielding Aziraphale from fire
I wanna talk about The Angel Who Would Be Crowley.
Because I had a certain set of expectations, which got thoroughly trashed in the first five minutes of S2, and my genuine response is, "Oh, fuck, yup. You're right. That's WAY better."
Looking around at GO fandom, I'm not alone in this. So let's talk about it.
Basically, a lot of people (myself included) believed that he was a high-ranking angel, and therefore as chilly and remote as every other powerful angel we'd seen at that point. We pictured Crowley-To-Be as long-haired, regal and imposing --and the fanart at the time reflected this. I'd link some if Tumblr didn't hate links.
Something like this:
We were collectively drawing on a few things --mostly, Crawly's appearance and general bearing in the Biblical scenes of S1--
--But also scattered hints of his importance, backed up by conspicuous absences in Heaven and a few profound displays of power. That's all better covered elsewhere, so I won't reiterate the arguments here. All I'm saying is: I think our headcanons were justified.
But it turns out he was this:
!!!
With his curly little--!!
And his neat white--!!
IT TURNS OUT, he was an angel who squeaked and squealed when he was happy; who flailed his arms around and made explosion noises with his mouth to explain nebulas; who preened when told his stars were pretty. Furfur, who knew him before the Fall, says:
"You used to jump on me back, little monkey in a waistcoat..."
(The use of a diminutive there, 'little'...oh, that fascinates me.)
In a pretty huge subversion of expectations, we're given these glimpses of an angel who was sweet, and joyful, and heart-meltingly silly.
In sum...an innocent.
(Perhaps innocent to a troubling degree.
We see how he troubles Aziraphale, during their first conversation. He starts looking around and behind them, checking to make sure that no one can HEAR the blithe and reckless things coming out of this angel's mouth. This angel who talks like he's never been reprimanded in his life; like it's never occurred to him that anyone would want to hurt him.
Before the Beginning, Aziraphale understood Heaven better than he did. The danger is plainly occurring to Aziraphale.)
So now, we the viewers are in on a cruel joke that Aziraphale has known all along, which is that this --THIS-- is the angel who--
*checks notes*
--did a million lightyear freestyle dive into a boiling pool of sulphur. For asking questions.
...Imagine you are Aziraphale, and everything inside you wants to believe Heaven are the Good Guys, and God is Good and Everything She does is capital-R Right...and now try to reconcile that. Keep trying. I don't think he ever totally managed it in 6000 years.
All this gets further complicated when we learn that, despite all of the above, we were still right. That sweet excitable babby up there?
He WAS a powerful and high-ranking angel.
That much is explicitly confirmed, with significant evidence that he could have been among the mightiest of archangels...
...Who apparently accosted his fellow angels for piggyback rides. And was remembered millennia later by those (now fallen) angels as something 'little.'
What does that tell us about who he was? Is?
Hell, Aziraphale has known to be wary of the archangels (and the judgements of Heaven in general) since before the Fall even happened. He chooses to believe they are Good; he can't fool himself into thinking they are Safe.
Yet he's absolutely certain that Crowley won't hurt Job's children. Enough to stand in a burning building and say to them, "I can't save you, but don't be afraid. I won't need to."
And what reason does he give?
("I know you."
"You do not know me."
"I know the angel you were.")
What does that tell us about who he was? Is?
("The angel you knew is not me."
But how is Aziraphale supposed to believe that, when he can see him all the time?)
tl;dr --yes, this is better. I love the tragedy of it.
'Innocence died screaming' and all that.
We always talk about how David Tennant manages to pull off the duality of Crowley's look (the switch from angel to demon) and generally change his entire appearance for the different roles he plays but me personally, I am just SO baffled at how they manage to turn Michael Sheen into Aziraphale
The fact that Aziraphale chose to listen to Shostakovich among all other classical composers says a lot.
Shostakovich was one of the brightest musicians of his time in the USSR. His ideas and music had revolutionary themes and pictures repressive power of Soviet Leaders.
Back then, Soviet Union eliminated anyone who thought differently or had different opinions on how the state should be governed and how people should live in there.
Shostakovich was terrified of the government and, for a while, stopped releasing his creative music, instead keeping a low profile and went with the flow until he didn’t.
I DONT KNOW WHAT THIS BASTARD IS DOING. But I believe in him. I think he has a plan.
Aziraphale, you go, girl ✨
Sitting here watching s2xe5 and it’s the scene where Crowley is asking Aziraphale why his French is so bad and he says “I went to Monsieur Rossignol’s night classes in 1760”.
I decided to Google if this was a real person since the name wasn’t familiar to me, and instead I had my giant gay heart stomped on by Neil Gaiman once again.
The French word for nightingale: Rossignol
It’s the language of romance and Aziraphale took night classes with a Mr. Nightingale. I CAN’T BREATHE.
What does the arab in your carrd mean? Is it like afab and amab?
.. i’m palestinian
Aziraphale was about to confess too before Metatron and his coffee came into the bookshop;
Okay, hear me out. In 2x02, when they’re talking about “how people fall in love”, Crowley talks about sudden rainstorms,
which is an obvious reference to how he fell in love, about 6000 years earlier (poor demon thinks everyone falls in love the way he did)
Aziraphale doesn’t get it and answers “seems a bit unlikely”. He didn’t connect the dots, he doesn’t think Crowley loves him that way. All he knows about falling in love is what he read in books. Of course he fell in love with Crowley too, but I’m pretty sure he did in ‘41 when Crowley saved his books from a bomb, and that’s a bit hard to recreate, so… balls.
That’s his idea, you make two people dance together and they magically fall in love, which is so in-character I want to scream. Now let’s get to 2x05. We know Aziraphale always tried to avoid organizing those meetings, but he’s suddenly so excited about it he is WILLING TO GIVE AWAY HIS BOOKS. Why would he do something like that? There’s no way it’s actually to make Maggie and Nina fall in love. At that point, Muriel doesn’t even care anymore about it, they all know the truth about the miracle is about to be revealed, so there’s no point in being so persistent about Maggie and Nina’s relationship. He’s an angel; of course he cares about humans being happy, but I don’t think he cares so much about two semi-strangers’ love life that he’s willing to give away BOOKS for the off chance that the Jane Austen method will actually work on two humans he knows nothing about. So, my conclusion is, he’s organizing that night for him and Crowley. They are the ones that he hopes realize they’re deeply in love with each other, and that is something worth giving away books for. Which explains why he’s so excited but also a bit scared when he asks Crowley to dance with him.
It explains why he ignores the fact that Crowley is trying to tell him that something important and dangerous is about to happen, just so they can have a little dance. It also explains this reaction when he sees Gabriel and Beelzebub being in love with each other
and the way he looks at Crowley while they’re talking about them.
I mean, I know he always stares lovingly at him, but not like that, right? That’s a face that screams “I’m so going to tell you I love you when all this is over”.
So, my point is:
Fuck Metatron.
That’s my point.
good omens started out as something deeply collaborative between you and the wonderful Terry Pratchett. You’ve said before that writing the love between Aziraphale and Crowley was, in part, because “they needed more of a plot than they had in the book”.
What do you think Terry would have thought about their relationship now?
(thank you for creating something that has comforted, inspired and emotionally destroyed me)
Given the conversations we had in 2006 about the sequel, I think he would have been very happy.
If I read something on the asks that feels genuinely threatening or dangerous, or that's actually abusive, I just delete it and block the person.
If I'm answering an ask here you can assume that as far as I'm concerned even if it's apparently threatening or angry, it's meant humorously or with love.
It's never appropriate to dogpile people. Never appropriate to threaten or abuse them, even if you think you are doing it for me and with the best of intentions. Don't.
If you are upset on my behalf, or on behalf of all Tumblr users, just think "this is probably a tone-deaf attempt at humour" and let it go.
Totally in love with adventure time lore about deities, monsters, natural cycles, and magical items. The Adventure Time universe is one of the most interesting and complete I've ever seen and the only reason it's so underestimated is because it belongs to a "children's" show. I love how most of the lore of deities and such are similar to popular prototypes of legends and stories of gods and warriors from our reality. For example deity A (GOLB) kills the wife of deity B (magical man) causing him to lose his sanity and become a dictator in his homeland, then this deity (magical man) is kicked out of his land by other deities, creating disasters in the land he arrives in (Ooo). A human trying to save her lover from a curse crosses his path in Ooo and gains his powers making her lose her sanity. Then to escape the cycle of madness that encloses her and her lover this human decides to sacrifice herself by fusing with the deity that started all this disaster (GOLB) avoiding a new attack from said deity. And this is just a minimal part of the adventure time's lore, every magic object, god, monster and every character has its own lore that unite forming a very complete and magic, sad, crazy and fucking amazing universe.
I’m a big fan of when Jake and Princess Bubblegum act like Finn’s divorced parents who are trying their best to figure out how to co-parent their troubled teenager
When I was younger I hated romantic comedies. But it just occurred to me that what I actually hated was films/shows with sexist stereotypes and heteronormative bullshit. Turns out I actually fucking love romantic comedies now that I've figured out they can be queer and/or not full of toxic patriarchal nonsense.
#6000 years of lack of communication (inspired by this post by @wilyserpentofeden)