Translation Of The “looooong” Comments Made By Yuzuru During The Press Conference After The FS At

Team Japan leads after the SP! 🇯🇵❤️

They were just told at the press con that a last time a country sweeped the podium was in the 1950s.

I find it kinda funny that they all have different team Japan jackets 😂

Prologue Yokohama Day 1 - A Dream that Will Someday End 羽生結弦

[Part 1] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7]

writing essays and saving them in my tumblr because my school a bitch and doesn;t allow me to edit offline

anyway yeah i was trying to find an art i reblogged and got hit with history research

Mike Faist in the Hunger Games

Thank you @graziellalovesriff for finding this gem.

There you have the leader of the pack 😉

Reminds a bit of this ⬇️

As the one time every four years that everyone watches figure skating is finally here, I’ve taken it as my God-given duty to educate you guys about the complete and utter CLOWNERY and the corruption that goes on daily in the Russian figure skating scene. I’m not joking when I say this shit is like bad reality TV. A famous coach has a cult following. Politicians get asked about coaches feuding. Putin, the president of Russia, got mad over unfair scoring and dissed a Canadian skater on live TV. It’s insane.

And there is a LOT of drama going on here, so I’ll try to explain it just in time for Olympics so you guys can understand why you are almost definitely not going to see a single ladies’ medallist over the age of 17 years old this Olympics (or possibly ever again).

If the only time that you tune in to figure skating is once every four years, here’s how things are going to go. You’re going to watch the 2022 Olympics. You’re going to casually watch the ladies’ figure skating segments. And if you’re a little bit observant, you’re going to think: ‘Why is every single medallist under the age of 18 years old? And why are they all Russian?’ And if you do your research, you’ll see that not a single girl over the age of 18 years old who is non-Russian has won gold in ladies’ figure skating for the past two winter Olympics. Why is this?

Well, it all started with Evgenia Medvedeva, one of the most famous figure skaters in the world. (If your last interaction with figure skating was with Yuri!!! On Ice in 2016, she’s that girl who wore a Victuuri shirt on the famously homophobic Russian national television, got illustrated into YOI official art, and did a routine to Sailor Moon. So. She’s really awesome and my favourite.)

Anyway, Evgenia won everything in the 2016 and 2017 seasons. She completed a Grand Slam twice, which is when a skater wins literally every major competition, at the ages of 16 and 17. Those two years were called the Evgenia dominance era, because she just kept winning. It was insane. She was Miss Stability because she literally never fell, she was reliable, she was unbeatable, she was the favourite to win the 2018 Olympics.

And then, just in time for the Olympics, at the old age of 18 years old, she started to fail.

The first time she fell in competition after two long years of straight clean programs, people thought it was a fluke. But then she fell again, and again, and again. And her younger, less injured teammate, 15yo Alina Zagitova, started to take the spotlight. Alina wasn’t struggling with back problems or a broken foot like Evgenia. Alina was born in the right year, at the right time, which made her 15 years old just in time to qualify for the Olympics, and she won the gold medal for ladies’ figure skating. Meanwhile, the favourite to win the Olympics won silver, being pushed aside for her younger and healthier teammate.

Now you might think, wow, that’s really sad. But it was just a one-time thing, right? Alina will surely go on to have the long and fruitful career that Evgenia, by some fluke of the universe, didn’t get to have. Right?

Wrong. Alina retires at the ripe age of 17 years old after peaking at 15 and the figure skating world. Goes. Crazy, because now people are beginning to notice a pattern. It started with Yulia Lipnitskaya, 15 years old at the Sochi Olympics, who skated the best programs of her entire life and retired soon after. It continued with Evgenia, who peaked at 16 and 17 and then developed chronic injuries that make her unable to turn her back to the left (a horrifying statement she revealed in a recent interview), and then with Alina, who skated her best at 15 and ‘took a break’ at 17, which fans have dubbed the ‘expiration date’.

Now, you might be remembering the figure skating greats like Yuna Kim, Michelle Kwan, Mao Asada. They didn’t retire at 17. This is not normal. This was not even close to the norm ten years ago, but now we’re heading into Beijing 2022 and a 15 year old is the favourite to win gold. So what is the the common factor that caused all these skaters to retire at 17, 18, 19?

The answer? Eteri Tutberidze, a famous Russian coach with a monopoly on ladies’ figure skating. Her students, which include Yulia, Evgenia, and Alina, have won literally every single competition under the sun for the past few years. And one by one, without fail, all her students have broken their bodies by the time they reach 17-18. She has never been able to successfully coach a student over 18 years old, but she doesn’t need to, because when one girl gets too old, three will come to replace her. If you’re talking solely about results, then sure, Eteri is a great coach. When her students shine, they shine bright. They’re one-season wonders, winning everything. But they’re one-season wonders, so after a few seasons, they’re replaced by the newest girl, the girl who’s 15 at the right time, younger and less injured. Why is this? Why don’t these skaters have longevity?

Well, it’s because of the body type you need to have to land jumps in figure skating. In skating, there are jumps called triples (where you rotate three times in the air) and quads (where you rotate four times). Quads were practically unheard of in ladies’ figure skating until 2018. That’s how recent they are. A quad in ladies’ fs has never even been landed at the Olympics before. This is because quads are insanely hard to do, and normally they require a lot of muscle, strength and grit to power through the four rotations in the air. Before 2018, the last quad jump had been landed by Miki Ando in 2002. 16 years before the next quad.

Before 2018, the highest technical jumps women did were the triples. Then Alexandra Trusova (aka Quad Queen Sasha Trusova aka the one to root for in the 2022 Olympics) came along and fucked shit up landed a quad toe loop at the age of 13. Sasha is the first female skater to land the quad Lutz, quad flip, and quad toe loop jumps, the second to land the quad Salchow (after Miki Ando), and the first to land two and three ratified quads in a free skate. She started the Quad Revolution and basically ensured that all the girls competing with her had to have quad jumps or a triple axel in order to win over her. And they did. Anna Shcherbakova, Kamila Valieva, Sofia Akatyeva, Adeliia Petrosian, all started landing quads too.

And that’s all well and good and all, yay for technical advancements or whatever, except that the reason quads started booming in the ladies’ was because a certain coach had figured out that you don’t need to be made of muscle, or have years of training, or experience to land a quad.

No. You just need very, very low body weight.

Yeah. Now you see where I’m going.

Girls have started landing quads like never before. At the junior levels (>15yos), it’s become commonplace to see Russian preteen girls train quads as if they’re jumping machines. Teenage girls have the perfect body type to quickly rotate four times in the air- a slender frame, narrow hips and short height. And once they hit puberty, it’s over. Quads rely in pulling in all your body weight as closely as possible to your centre, allowing you to maximise your speed of rotation- but you can’t pull in hips or a chest. That’s why most female figure skaters lose their jumps after puberty, and why so far only teenage girls have managed to land quads. And how do you delay puberty as long as possible so you can keep winning for as long as you possibly can? Well, it’s simple. You just don’t eat.

Even before the Quad Revolution, Tutberidze’s skaters relied on their low body weight to do triple jumps so much that during the 2014 Olympics, 15yo Yulia Lipnitskaya had to subsist on a diet of entirely powdered substances. The girl did not eat a single tangible meal the entire time. And by the time the 2018 Olympics rolled around, Tutberidze had forbidden 18yo Evgenia and 15yo Alina from drinking water for fear that a few grams of water weight might affect their aerodynamics. Alina mentioned in an interview that they could only rinse their mouths out with water and spit it back out.

The thing about quads is that no one really knows the long-term effects they can have on these teenage girls’ health, as the oldest girl to land regular quads turns 18 this year in 2022. However, Evgenia Medvedeva only did triple-triple jumps her entire career, and she ended up with a broken foot and can’t even turn her back to the left. So. Whatever the long-term effects are, they’re going to be bad. 15yo Daria Usacheva was supposed to be a strong contender this year, but a hip fracture during practice at the NHK Trophy made her unexpectedly withdraw. Alena Kanysheva lands a quad at 14 and retires at 16. And still, still even younger girls will come to replace them and drive older skaters who can’t land quads anymore out of the sport. Ladies’ figure skating has turned into a sport where 15 year olds dominate for one or two seasons, and get traded in for newer and less injured skaters.

And it’s not like the girls themselves aren’t painfully aware of this- Sofia Samodelkina barely missed the cutoff age for the Beijing 2022 Olympics at 14 years old, and she revealed in an interview that she prays every night for them to be postponed to 2023 because she knows that when she turns 18yos in 2026, she won’t be able to compete with the younger and stronger 15yos. Evgenia knew that she couldn’t stay with Eteri once she turned 18, because the technique no longer worked, so she left Eteri to be coached by Brian Orser (but forgot to send Eteri flowers for thanking her for being such a great coach so Eteri went on a smear campaign against her and showed Evgenia ghosting her texts on Russian national television). Then judges started underscoring Evgenia just for the crime of training under the ‘wrong’ coach, so she had to return to Eteri.

So if everyone knows that this is going on- if everyone is aware that figure skating is built on the broken bodies of young girls who sacrifice their long-term health for the sport only to be cast aside at 17 years old- is anyone doing anything about Tutberidze’s borderline abusive training methods?

Well. The ISU (international skating union) gave Eteri an award for Best Coach, if that’s what you mean by ‘doing something about it’. Because apparently they don’t give a fuck that these girls are being used like products and discarded just as quickly as they come. They just care that her girls win.

And win they do. Enter: the 3A, the trio of elite Russian figure skaters Anna Shcherbakova, Aliona Kostornaia and Alexandra Trusova (nicknamed the 3A because all their names start with an a but everyone calls Alexandra as Sasha).

The 3A won every. Major. Competition. During the 2020 season. They didn’t let anyone else on that damn podium. They were playing musical chairs with those three podium spots. The main surprise when you watched fs wasn’t ‘omg who will podium’ but ‘omg in which order will 3A podium’. And if you recall, 2020 is the year our reigning Olympic champion Alina Zagitova turned 17, so she was already on her way out. Anna was 15, Sasha was 15 and Aliona was 16- optimal ages in figure skating. Aliona didn’t have quads, but she had a beautiful triple axel and artistry, while Sasha had pure raw athleticism and Anna fell somewhere in the middle. But unfortunately, they weren’t born in the right year. By the time the qualifiers for the Beijing Olympics rolled around, Anna and Sasha were 17 and Aliona was 18, and a new face entered and broke nine world records in her debut season alone- Kamila Valieva.

Kamila is, supposedly, better than all the girls who came before her. (Even though I still like Aliona better.) She has the artistry and consistency that Sasha lacked and the quads that Aliona lacked. She’s the full package of everything a skater should be, and she’s 15 years old in an Olympic year. She has it all, and tbh doesn’t really have any other competition. Anna and Sasha are still leagues ahead of everyone else but if they’re as unreachable as kings, Kamila is as unbeatable as a god. Kamila, Sasha and Anna are the three skaters representing Russia at Beijing (Aliona withdrew from this season due to a hand fracture she’s ‘not allowed to talk about’.). Anna is almost definitely injured nine ways to hell, Sasha is probably injured too, so Kamila is probably the only one who’s like. Even moderately healthy out of the Russian girls, if you discount the fact that she’s like severely underweight. Idk if she’ll be the one to break the cycle, but hopefully this monopoly on ladies’ fs ends soon and new rules are put in place to stop girls giving themselves chronic injuries by the time they turn 16.

Anyway, that’s the summary on the figure skating drama. Please cheer for Sasha and Anna! I want Sasha to be the first person to land a quad at Olys because she was the one who started this whole quad revolution so it’s only right that she should finish it. Wow this took me a long time to write and we only covered the tip of the iceberg. Hope you guys enjoy the Beijing Olympics btw happy cny 祝大家新年快樂, 身體健康 (god knows they need it) 心想事成 etc etc

Edit: Hi, it’s op here! I regret my poor choice of words in calling this as ‘drama’, I meant to refer to the ‘drama’ as all the issues I mentioned in the first paragraph like Putin dissing a Canadian skater unfair judging scores home bias etc etc, but I guess it was misread as the fact that I was calling this institutionalised child abuse ‘drama’. I wrote this post to bring attention to the child abuse happening because I think it’s wrong and unfair that no one is doing anything about it and I do NOT mean to trivialise it as drama. Sorry this was such a poor choice of words cuz I was fr gonna talk about those whole other stories but then I got sidetracked with this whole thing and I forgot to change the words ‘drama’ 😭😭😭 Thank you so much for understanding 😭😭😭

Pastel Evan/alt Connor? +Facial study? Cuz Mike Faist is way too hard to draw so I gotta get good.

The Vavoom: Or, when the show's hinting Crowley & Aziraphale first kissed

It was not in 2.06, if that makes you feel any better?

Meta/theory hybrid stuffity stuff below the cut. As always, all interpretations are valid. This isn't meant to offend anyone who sees things differently. Post contains spoilers for the films 'Kiss Me Deadly' (1955), 'About Time' (2013), 'Love Actually' (2003), and 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (1994). Apologies that this took a few days. Life's been wild this week. Let's dive in...

Right. So. The Vavoom...

I feel like most of us, by this point, are probably in agreement that Crowley is not talking about something he saw in a Richard Curtis film when he talks about his plan to help The Shop Lesbians to fall in love... and that, if he's not talking about something he saw in a movie, then he's talking about something he experienced... and yes, sure, absolutely Crowley has been on Earth for 6,000 years and could have vavoomed with basically anyone who has ever lived at this point as well as one semi-sentient car and even the world's once only-remaining unicorn but... we all know he's talking about Aziraphale. So this is about unraveling what the show presents as Clues to this end and using those Clues to solve for x and see if we can prove that Crowley is talking about Aziraphale and then figure out when this Vavoom happened with the information the show has given us so far... and the good news is that we can do all of those things so here we go...

The first thing to do is to eliminate the Richard Curtis films. Let's just start with Crowley saying that he saw his whole vavoom moment in "a Richard Curtis film." As someone who has seen a frankly embarrassing number of Richard Curtis films, I can tell you that this is a very amusing misdirect from a writing standpoint. It is amusing because it's a wink of sorts towards the same problem that comes up when you try to find The Vavoom on the GO timeline based on what the show's presented so far. What is that problem? It's that-- at first, cursory glance-- no one GO scene or Curtis film seems to have everything Crowley describes. Don't worry, though, because we actually do have enough information to find the lone caraway seed beneath these three cowrie shells here. You'll be Aziraphale-voicing an "a-HA!" very soon. :)

There are only two Richard Curtis films that feature elements Crowley lists as having occurred during The Vavoom: 'About Time' and 'Four Weddings and a Funeral.' The Awning of a New Age scene in GO actually winds up an homage of sorts to 'About Time', as it is referencing it pretty heavily. However, there is no vavooming in 'About Time'; meaning, there is not this gaze-to-kiss moment that Crowley is talking about. A wedding reception tent collapses under heavy rain and soaks several supporting characters in the film, much like how our supporting characters Nina and Maggie get soaked by too much rain causing the awning to collapse. There is no gaze or almost-kiss or kiss before it. There are other canopies-- umbrellas-- but no one gazes or kisses under one. So, Crowley did not see The Vavoom in 'About Time'-- but that particular Richard Curtis film might have been the one in Crowley's mind when he quickly latched onto Richard Curtis films while speaking with Aziraphale in the pub.

As a result, thinking about his conversation with Aziraphale while trying to craft his Shop Lesbians Vavoom might have actually caused him to over-weather and cause the awning to drench Maggie & Nina. So the joke there is more that The Original Vavoom of which Crowley is speaking in the pub scene is something that really happened and had an element or two in common with a scene in the Richard Curtis film, 'About Time', which also features Bill Nighy (see: 'Love Actually' stuff below), whose mannerisms Crowley seems to like to emulate at times. As a result of seeing the film and thinking about how it *wasn't* like The Vavoom-- the canopy collapsing, the lack of an actual Vavoom in motion prior to this, all of that disappointing Crowley greatly when he saw this film lol-- Crowley ironically then says he got the whole idea of The Vavoom from a Richard Curtis film... when, in fact, *the distinct lack of Vavoom* in the film was what Crowley remembered from it... and then, upon thinking of the pub discussion when trying to start an Awning of a New Age for Maggie & Nina, it accidentally became part of his miracle, causing him to over-Weather and, kind of hilariously, substituted the kiss Crowley was trying to incite with the collapsing awning scene from 'About Time'... the film then disappointing him all over again lol.

The other Richard Curtis film that is relevant is 'Four Weddings and a Funeral.' You might be familiar with the scene-- its ending scene-- just from cultural osmosis as this point, even if you haven't seen the film. Hugh Grant proposes to Andie MacDowell in the pouring rain. So, the big problem with this scene is that there is no canopy. None. Whatsoever. They're soaked through. We never see them go inside. They look into each other's eyes and they kiss but it's raining on them the whole time and Crowley is really specific about his canopy requirements for Vavooming. This scene is also wrong because it's a proposal between characters who have known one another on and off for years and have a more extensive history, whereas Nina and Maggie are much earlier in a potential relationship and The Vavoom Crowley talks about is an intense gaze into a first kiss. That said... just as how 'About Time' ties to Nina & Maggie's story, there are some 'Four Weddings'-y elements to Crowley & Aziraphale's relationship, in that their story also covers them meeting up through different points in time and such. 'Four Weddings' was also the first mainstream, hit rom com to openly feature queer characters in supporting roles so it's a strong one for GO to be referencing... but, ultimately, no Crowley-described Vavoom scene in sight.

Finally, there's 'Love Actually', which doesn't actually have a single element in it that pertains to The Vavoom but I'm throwing it in here because I'm just looking at all GO ties to Richard Curtis films at this point. 'Love Actually' features Nina Sosanya (GO's Nina, of course) as a queer-coded character and, in GO, David Tennant has a few scenes where he seems to be channeling Bill Nighy's Billy Mack from 'Love Actually' in S1. (Tell me Crowley's not doing Billy Mack's walk when they cross the street to the bookshop in Eleven Years Ago in S1 lol.) For those of you who have somehow avoided seeing this movie lol, Billy Mack is an aging rock star who is the best character in the film and heavily queer-coded. In S2, there's also some Big Bill Nighy Energy in the "we'll just to have to make it worthwhile then" bit with Muriel in Heaven and also in the way he chuckles in the "I *was* there, you see" moment with Gabriel. Also probably worth mentioning that, in 'About Time', Bill Nighy plays the dad of one half of the main couple in the movie and his role is to teach him how to live life and this involves pursuing the woman he is trying to marry throughout his ability to fall through time. So, Bill Nighy is basically playing the S2 Crowley of 'About Time' while the main couple of that film parallels Maggie & Nina, in that he's setting up the scenario for the couple involved to get together. Nothing in the film, though, is as overt or contains elements that match The Vavoom, other than the collapsed awning, as we got into above.

So mah point is dolphins that while there are a couple of Richard Curtis films that contain bits and pieces of what Crowley is talking about, there isn't a single one that has anything really remotely close to the, uh, extremely specific scenario he was detailing... so now we have to look at just what the hell Crowley's on about, exactly... and for this, we are, surprisingly, going to wind up looking at a very different film from any by Richard Curtis-- 1955's classic film noir, 'Kiss Me Deadly'. Why this random film, you say? Because it's actually not at all random to GO S2. It's the origins of the phrase "vavoom"... and S2 of GO contains a multi-episode homage to the film.

'Kiss Me Deadly' is, tonally, very different from GO as it's pretty dark film noir but it has a plot you might find a little familiar. One night, driving down a dark road, the main character picks up a hitchhiker who has lost her memory. After she's murdered, the film revolves around the main character-- a private investigator-- and his lover/partner investigating the case to try to solve the mystery. GO's episode "The Hitchhiker" opens with a plot and visual homage to this film when Aziraphale picks up Shax in The Bentley and obviously S2 contains a plot surrounding a mystery related to a character who has lost their memory in Gabriel. I'm going to do a separate thing that is a deeper dive into this with particular emphasis on how the lead characters relate to Crowley and Aziraphale at another point in time because it crosses into too many other things to fit it into this one at the moment but the reason why I bring the film up now is because of its ties to the phrase "vavoom."

"Vavoom", alternatively spoken as "va va voom" and containing the same meaning, is thought to have originated in a cartoon in the late 1940s but its use in "Kiss Me Deadly" in 1955 is what pushed it into popular, cultural use and knowledge. In the film, there's a character named Nick, who is friends with the two leads (the Crowley & Aziraphale-paralleling Hammer and Velda). They have nicknamed him "Va Va Voom" because he says it so often. Nick is an auto mechanic who works on the leads' car-- yes, there's a Bentley parallel lol-- and it is his use of the phrase that made it one we are familiar with today. But what does it really mean exactly in terms of this scene in the pub?

Without going too far down the road that we wind up in another meta about wordplay and symbolism in S2 here, the show is doing things related around the word 'passion' and all of its various meanings. It begins with Aziraphale referring to Maggie's feelings for Nina as "a pash"-- which is British English slang for "a crush" or "an infatuation". It comes from the word "passion"... but the word "passion" actually means something much different. "Passion" is very specifically romantic, erotic love when used to describe a relationship. It means enthusiasm when about a hobby or the like-- Aziraphale will get the neighbors to come to the meeting/ball by negotiating their commitment based on things they're passionate about-- Mr. Arnold and Doctor Who, Mutt and the history of magic. Finally, S2 is tying a lot of this passion-related plot to *The* Passion-- as in, The Passion of the Christ, or the Christian phrase for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Why is it called 'The Passion' anyway? Because the Latin root of 'passion' is 'pati', which actually means 'to suffer.' Looking at all of this and how the show pairs up scenes with different types of passion is a whole other meta. I'm bringing it up here because of the relationship between 'passion' and 'vavoom'...

"Vavoom" means voluptuously sexy. It means passionate. Something having a sense of "vavoom" or "vavavoom" means it is either suggestive of or is sensually pleasing. In GO S2, Maggie & Nina represent the pash use of passion-- the new love, the crush-- while Crowley & Aziraphale are the show's example of passion in its fuller, richer meaning of romantic, erotic love. So now that we eliminated the idea that Crowley is talking about having seen an example of this vavoom he's talking about in a movie-- I mean, 'Kiss Me Deadly' is totally a movie Crowley saw once so he might have first heard the phrase in it, like many people did but there's no vavoom itself the way Crowley describes it in the film, just the phrase-- but yeah, now that we've eliminated the idea that Crowley got his idea from a film, we can say with relative ease that he's talking about something he personally experienced. I think we can all agree that if he did, it was with Aziraphale and the purpose of him bringing it up in the scene is not just as a suggestion to solve the issue of needing to matchmake The Shop Lesbians but as a way of being seductive towards Aziraphale.

This is also part of 'Kiss Me Deadly' in that Crowley here is the Velda to Aziraphale's Hammer. Hammer is preoccupied with the mystery. Velda tries to help him solve it but is also seeking his romantic attention the whole time and being rebuffed in favor of the mystery. It's darker in the film, as you'd probably expect, since it's film noir, and Aziraphale is actually subtly playing back in GO S2. In GO, it's mostly played off as Crowley, kicked out of bed since the religious family are in the guest room lol, continuously making overtures towards Aziraphale to torment him a little for the whole Gabriel situation but also mainly just because he likes to and he misses him. (It has been, like, maybe 18 whole hours lol.) He continues it into later in the day when Muriel is in the bookshop and Aziraphale is a little more overtly playful then but he is in the pub scene as well. All of this also ties into the fact that Aziraphale wants to drive The Bentley but again, that's a whole other meta. Going to stay focused on the kiss here...

So what we're saying is that, in the scene in The Dirty Donkey, Crowley does that whole lean and the sexy hands and that super posh voice he does from time to time to seduce Aziraphale, and describes their first kiss back to Aziraphale when asked to come up with a romantic solution to help their neighbors realize they are in love. Specifically, Crowley says this:

Whew. *fans self* Jesus, Crowley... No wonder why Aziraphale thought you could help The Shop Lesbians. That? Was romantic...

The key thing I love about this is that while everything he says lends itself to the idea of a kiss, he doesn't actually explicitly say that until the later scene in the back room when Muriel is in the bookshop-- the "one fabulous kiss" part. It's evident later on when he explains the plan to Jimbriel and when he puts it into action that his intent is to trigger a scenario that might prompt Maggie and Nina into kissing and when the awning collapses, he feels like he failed at the overall Vavoom. He did, however, see it working from across the street, such were the fireworks, when they looked into each other's eyes and what's sweet and also very hot about this scene in the pub is that the looking into each other's eyes is the key bit of The Vavoom to Crowley. The kiss is what happened as a result of looking into each other's eyes. The romance of the gaze and the passion of the kiss = The Vavoom but the latter without the former isn't the whole rapturous, perfect moment and Crowley is into this moment. He's still weak in the knees over the thought of it.

And what he says happened in it? They looked into each other's eyes and realized they were made for each other? Crowley thinks that. He says that, flat out, to Aziraphale. Crowley. Who was abandoned by the God who was supposed to love him believes that same God created he and Aziraphale for each other. That they're fated, destined soulmates. And that they both knew it, in that moment when they were taking shelter from a sudden rainstorm together, under a canopy, and they gazed into each other's eyes and then

Yes, I am aware that he says "humans" in that bit in the pub scene. He's referring to Nina & Maggie but also he and Aziraphale have a tendency to refer to their love for one another in human terms in different scenes throughout the series, which is probably a whole other meta and *refocuses on finding this damn kiss here*...

So Crowley-- while heavily emphasizing the words "together" and "canopy", both for maximum sexiness and to lead us in the correct direction lol-- tells us what's needed in this scene, right? We need a sudden rainstorm, a canopy, them wet from the rain and taking shelter, Crowley's glasses to be off or he's in a situation to be able to take them off (ironically, unlike he was when he was in the pub while he's talking about all this erotic gazing), and then we have all this gazing into a very vavoom-y, very passionate first kiss.

So, what scenes seem at all remotely tied to things Crowley describes for The Vavoom? There are three scenes that jump out immediately-- and it's none of them lol. They *are not kidding* about quite literally 'three cowrie shells and a lone caraway seed'. There are three scenes that they want you to think could be connected to this and be distracted by to complete their sleight of hand trick. They want you to look towards Aziraphale's hand and not up his sleeve, so to speak.

So the three cowrie shells scenes here are Before the Beginning, Eden, and the Job minisode. Why? They are the scenes that involve Crowley and Aziraphale and some form of a canopy, which is one of the two words in Crowley's whole Vavoom moment that he heavily emphasizes. So it's not Before the Beginning and it's not Eden and why? Because we're missing the other word Crowley heavily emphasizes-- *together.* Crowley and Aziraphale took shelter from a sudden rainstorm *together* under a canopy. That's the set up. But Before the Beginning and Eden-- the first scenes our minds run to-- are not this because they are sheltering *one another* but not sheltering *together*. One of them is exposed to the rain each time.

There's an additional possibility that is thrown into the mix that is tied to these two scenes, which is the S2 announcement poster-- the one that features Crowley and Aziraphale on Whickber Street in the rain. That one is also out because Crowley is being sheltered from the rain by Aziraphale with a tartan umbrella (ridiculously adorable, I agree lol)-- but they're not both sheltering together. That one feels like it was designed just to fuck with us, especially because Crowley's hair in it is, for some reason, at Eleven Years Ago length in it. It's almost like it exists to both be cute and to, after the season is over, make us go wait... was it then? (It was not then.) More distractions. Ok, so, then what about the Job minisode?

Is it ox rib night? This seems to have some elements at play-- there's a roof and a storm and them together and all-around kiss vibes-- but it's actually not this, either. That said? Job is connected to it in a big way and helps prove my theory here so we're going to come back to it. I'll eliminate it here by pointing out that when Crowley defends The Vavoom as a possibility for Maggie & Nina to Aziraphale, he says "get humans wet and staring into each other's eyes" and "humans" in that bit is them, even if they are not fully. This eliminates the Job minisode as The Vavoom because it confirms that Crowley & Aziraphale did get wet as they went to shelter from the storm. In the Job minisode, they never go out in it. So, Job is out, too.

Ok, so then how do we find the one scene that unlocks this and points us towards the answer hidden in plain sight in front of us?

What is the one scene that really should tell us more about The Vavoom? How about the one wherein Crowley partially recreates it?

The Awning of a New Age is the lone carraway seed. Maggie & Nina paralleling Crowley & Aziraphale. What can we learn about what happened with Crowley & Aziraphale from what happened in this Maggie & Nina scene?

We already know that Crowley feels like he partially failed at recreating The Vavoom for them. It was meant to lead into a kiss and then the awning collapsed. That is what is different from Crowley & Aziraphale's first kiss but Crowley was delighted by the gazing, which we already know to be the very important bit of this here. Off of this, we can conclude that there's obviously a parallel of this bit for Crowley & Aziraphale and this is where the parallels in the scene stop. That means that what happens *before* the gazing moment in The Awning of a New Age scene is important because that's the parallel. So, what's happening while Crowley spots them together outside and starts up the rain? They're talking, right? And what are they talking about?

They're talking about one of them-- Nina-- having a partner who is unreasonably upset. Nina is anxious about it. She doesn't blame Maggie for it, as it's not Maggie's fault. It's also not Nina's own fault and what Lindsay wants from Nina is confining and abusive. Lindsay, we learn, is cruel. We decide in this scene really how much we don't like Nina with this woman and that we want her to be with nice Maggie who is sweet and supportive and is over the moon for her.

On the surface, this would seem to be absolutely nothing like any Crowley & Aziraphale scene we've ever seen, right? Fooled by what is on the surface-- modern lesbians in London Soho, one of whom has a romantic partner-- this seems to be a plot Crowley & Aziraphale have never had. Except, that it's not. It's a parallel to one you'll remember.

One, paralleling sentence here for you...

God's a bit tetchy...

Awning of a New Age unlocks that Lindsay being unreasonably angry and dolling out insane punishment for no actual misdeeds is a parallel to God during The Flood. God was Aziraphale's Lindsay-- the unseen, abusive partners, sending down their words and marching orders and causing distress. Crowley approached Aziraphale like how Maggie approaches Nina. Aziraphale half-heartedly tries to defend God the way that Nina half-heartedly tries to defend Lindsay but both pretty much give up in the face of Crowley's and Maggie's sane responses and support. The agreement that the present situation-- Lindsay about to abandon Nina, God about to abandon her creations in The Flood-- is horrible and unjust. They connect over the lack of justice. The Flood scene we saw ends as the rain begins, with Crowley and Aziraphale both looking up as it starts to fall.

Maggie and Nina get further-- they get to the first half of The Vavoom, in parallel. We haven't seen that yet with Crowley & Aziraphale. (Maggie & Nina also didn't have to go stop and save a bunch of people first lol.)

So how do we know that The Flood was the first kiss?

How do we know that Crowley and Aziraphale first kissed in Ancient Mesopotamia in fucking 3004 B.C. and have been vavoom sorted gone on each other ever since?

Because it happening in the aftermath of saving lives in The Flood would then mean it meets every one of the elements Crowley describes. They get wet from the storm. They will work to save everyone, which is evident from Aziraphale being dead fucking certain in the Job minisode that Crowley was a sweetheart who wasn't going to kill any goats or kids. How would he know this for sure? Saying that what God was doing was terrible in The Flood scene isn't enough for Aziraphale's surety by Job. That means that Mesopotamia and The Flood is the first time they teamed up. It means that Crowley saved people and animals during it. It more than likely means that he did so in a way similar to what he does during the Job minisode-- he transformed them into something that could survive the storm, probably rocks or something. (Big Medusa vibes lol.) But what would happen then? Crowley and Aziraphale would have to *stay through the storm to turn the people back*, right?

So, they'd need to seek shelter from the rainstorm. Under a canopy that could survive the storm. One they can both step back under and bump into one another beneath. Most likely, it's an actual canopy in original meaning of the word-- the shelter of trees. I think one of them (Crowley) bolted afterwards, based on the Job minisode, which we'll get to again in a second, and from under a canopy would be the easiest way to just be able to leave during a storm. (They did not spend the Biblical 40 days and 40 nights under that canopy or they almost certainly would have wound up having sex, which the show is suggesting in other scenes didn't happen for awhile after this which is also another meta lol.) But there's also another reason for trees that kind of cracks me up.

Remember when Aziraphale comes back from Edinburgh in S2 and, before he left, they had their whole Our Car/Our Bookshop thing and Crowley's been peeved for a day now over how Aziraphale got to go adventure in The Bentley and he got to wear a cardigan and babysit their former attempted murderer? And about how what he's really playfully irritated over is that he keeps trying to use Operation Shop Lesbians to turn Aziraphale on by mentioning their Vavoomy first kiss and Aziraphale is, kind of hilariously in retrospect, just totally tormenting him by barely indulging him on it? What happens when Aziraphale comes back from his trip?

Crowley-- genuinely-- says "there you are-- I was worried something had happened to you" and he's off-camera for a moment as he does so and the camera is on Aziraphale, who kind of seems like he would like one of Crowley's kisses about now. But what does Aziraphale get in place of where a kiss could have gone?

A face full of plants lol.

In their box, so that when he handed them to Aziraphale, they hung over his head like a canopy.

Don't wanna talk about The Vavoom, angel? Fine. You're just getting the trees. Mwah. *goes to his car and is all did you misssssss me kissy face*

Aziraphale, in old married bitch mode:

Finally, there's that Ancient Mesopotamia is, chronologically, the last scene so far in which Crowley is not seen wearing glasses, which is essential because Crowley-- while wearing his glasses in the pub lol-- describes the key bit of The Vavoom as involving staring into one another's eyes, which Crowley & Aziraphale can't do if Crowley has his glasses on. Since Crowley wears his glasses in approximately 87% of Good Omens, it means that the answer is in a scene where he's either not wearing them at all or could be seen as able to take them off. Mesopotamia meets that criteria. But there's still one more thing that can really hammer home the idea of this The Flood, Part 2 being their first kiss and that's going to be how we end up back at the Job minisode again.

Go back and think of the Job minisode again but now with the idea that the last time they saw one another-- ages before it-- they shared this moment of wildly passionate vavoom and look at how it recontextualizes the entire minisode.

Start with when they first see each other again. Where did *that* Aziraphale come from? He's teasing him.

The Aziraphale in Before the Beginning and in Eden and in the first bit of The Flood that we've seen is more anxious. He's not afraid of Crowley and he's definitely attracted to him but he's distracted by the dangers of what is happening while they're talking. Suddenly, he jumps from the Aziraphale of The Flood to the Aziraphale of the Job minisode. This one is flirtier. This one is literally like all so you never called-ing Bildad the Shuite lol. He's all "last time I saw you was... The Flood?" like he doesn't know and Crowley is all tight nod ohfuckit'shim and also ohfuckit'shimhavemissedhimsomuch and hiding behind his sunglasses-- Bildad is the first appearance of the sunglasses, chronologically, so we go from the Vavoomy gaze to Crowley hiding his eyes... this then all moves into the courtyard scene after a few moments...

Oh, what's this now? The only scene in the whole series in which Aziraphale asks Crowley to take his glasses off? And he does? So quickly-- intentionally-- that his expression from before is still on his face and it's just nothing but naked want like he's saying oh you wondered how I was looking at you from behind these this whole time? yeah, it was like this... Aziraphale is straight up asking for more vavoom. Take the glasses off. Look me in the eye and tell me you want this and yeah, sure, they're talking *on the surface* on *one level* of their conversation about whether or not Crowley is exhibiting serial killer tendencies and wanting to kill small animals and kids but, really, this scene is also the formation of their coded way of speaking to one another. Crowley's "I want to. I long (pause) to kill the blameless kids of Job the way I killed his blameless goats" and then lifting just enough of the magic to let Aziraphale see that he had actually not killed the goats at all but had actually faked their deaths, indicating that that was his plan for saving the kids as well... Well, it also means that *all* of what Crowley just said to him was coded. That's the weird pause after "I long" that breaks it into two sentences. It makes the second level of their conversation that Crowley whipped off his glasses, gazed into Aziraphale's eyes, and said I want to, I long... meaning, I want you, I want to kiss you again, I long for you...

But the bit of the Job episode that sells me on The Flood being The Vavoom is actually the bit just after Crowley miracles himself, Aziraphale, the kids, Jemimah's pot (because he's so not a serial killer, he saved the damn pot lol), the wine (because fuck that little Influencer Brat of Job-- Crowley's not about to kill a kid but he absolutely will drink the last of his wine for treating Aziraphale like a whore lol), and the food down to the cellar and started iguana-ing the kids. Why this bit? Because Aziraphale is fucking giddy and is just tormenting the living fuck out of Crowley.

He's all "I knew it!" and when you first watch the scene, right, you could think he means he knew that Crowley would save the kids. Yet, he already knows that by this point-- that's what the courtyard scene was. That's why he's yelling that he's "QUITE SURE" when Crowley asks him if he is (and calls him "angel" for the first time when doing so) while he's setting everything on fire just a moment before. Obviously, Aziraphale is happy that Crowley didn't kill the kids but what he's all I knew it *smug smile, actually fucking wiggling with flirty joy* about is that Crowley wanted to be alone with him again and would find a way to make it happen because what's the plan? The one that Aziraphale is totally teasing him about?

Aziraphale is going on about how oh, this is *Satan's* big plan, huh? A *big storm*? He loves every minute of it and he also really loves Crowley getting very close to him-- kissable close-- and being all "ooh aren't you brilliant?" when Aziraphale was acting smug. When did Crowley get that comfortable getting that close to him?

But yeah, Aziraphale loving every second of Crowley saving the kids, turning them into sightless/soundless iguanas, and sending a storm over the land for the night while keeping the two of them dry in a little cellar canopy so they can be alone together again-- essentially, repeating a version of The Vavoom scenario, as he'll still be trying to do millennia later... Aziraphale thought that very romantic and had no problem flirtily teasing the hell out of Crowley for it. Crowley's game is as ancient as Bildad the Shuite lol.

So yeah, what we're saying here is that there's a The Flood, Part 2 and that it's likely in S3. I actually wouldn't be surprised if it opened S3, since the first two seasons are opened with the other canopy-themed firsts-- the two first times they met, really, in Before the Beginning and Eden, both with the wing canopy-ing of one another-- so S3 could be the tree canopy and their first kiss. The Flood also seems likely to return because of how it ties thematically to the whole end of the world of S3's Second Coming plot.

One aspect of this theory that I really like is also that it means that Crowley was more female-presenting during their first kiss (which also goes along with the feminine energy sometimes associated with the phrase "vavoom"/"vavavoom") but also that when they next see one another in the Job minisode, Crowley is the more male-presenting Bildad the Shuite... and Aziraphale is really just into all of it. He's just into Crowley, full stop. We already know he is but I like the idea of it tied to their early days and showing it unfold a bit and how it's just all fine by Aziraphale, who just loves this being and is happy to see them and get to be alone with them again. It's very sweet and romantic.

I guess the last thing to say is that if this is true, we're all going to have a field day redoing the psychoanalysis of this bit below, aren't we?

akaashi x bokuto ♥

insta: @windsaor

you guys know that one part of shoboe where he frames his face w his hands.

Yea