Orange Pencil Has Entered The Chat

A cozy moment between husbands 🧡🖤.

No Nightingales (a Clue!)

Um.

I don't know why it took me THIS LONG to remember that this line is from Romeo & Juliet.

ROMEO: It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east. Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

Can I please just draw your attention to the last line, please?

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

Romeo is telling Juliet that he has to leave now before he is discovered and they are forced apart/he is killed.

Hmm, sounds suspicious to me...

They've been talking in coded messages since... well, always. No nightingales means Crowley is trying to tell Aziraphale that has to go, he's trying to tell him that it's dangerous - but what's promising about this is that if he's speaking in code, Crowley knows they're being watched.

I still can't say for sure what's going on at the end of the Final Fifteen, but I do believe this is a Clue.

i remembered I made this someday

Petitions - UK Government and Parliament

Petition: Do not stop transgender people from receiving care in mainstream hospital wards

The previous government proposed changes to the NHS constitution which would mean transgender hospital patients in England may not be treate

Well fucks? Get to it!

first night in the new cottage... 💕

💍❤️‍🔥✨ hair-over-flames in love!

thanks to @thatskindarough for the idea ily buddy<3

not where the storyline ends by foolishlovers (T, 14k, complete)

This Christmas, the only thing keeping Crowley going is the release of his favourite romance author’s latest novel, scheduled to launch on Christmas Eve. Yet his already sour mood takes another turn for the worse when he’s forced to conduct a last-minute job interview just before the holidays. Enter Aziraphale: the applicant who is utterly unqualified for the marketing role at the publishing house. Somehow, however, he manages to break through Crowley's carefully maintained indifference—if only for the duration of their meeting. After all, they're bound to part ways after the interview, never to cross paths again. But amid missed opportunities and holiday chaos, Crowley is about to discover that this Christmas still has a few surprises left in store for him.

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.