Lavendersourphantom - Meh

"Will you free my Palestine"

Sticker spotted in Brunswick, Victoria

Some art that reminds us of the tragedies of the world. Remember that the West holds itself up as a beacon of justice, yet they never actually help anyone.

Palestine will be free.

Defining Ineffable Love (or, Aziracrow Learn the Rules of Romance)

(In response to this ask about ineffables and asexuality)

One of the major threads this season was Aziraphale and Crowley asking themselves what exactly is their relationship. Not what it is in terms of how much they love each other. (That's a given.) But what it is in terms of the human implications of their love.

Crowley and Aziraphale definitely come at the relationship with different perspectives, in terms of what they’re willing to admit to the relationship being. I don’t think we can entirely interpret it in human terms. –David Tennant (source)

For 6000 years, they’ve never put a name on their relationship. They didn’t, because they’re inhuman, genderless, sexless beings and they didn’t grow up (as it were) with labels. And even when they did learn them, they couldn’t say it was love, because admitting that was a death sentence.

All of Aziraphale’s heart eyes and pining could live comfortably in his mind if he never admitted what that said about him as an angel (trauma compartmentalization). Crowley tries desperately to be cruel and nasty to add white noise around the blatant reality of his constant loyalty to Aziraphale. If you don’t put a word to it, it’s not real and they can’t punish you.

After the Not-pocalypse, for all rights and purposes, Aziraphale and Crowley chose humanity as their identity. We see Aziraphale “playing house” in various human roles (as a landlord, a private eye, a magician).

We even see Crowley intentionally taking on human behavior to handle emotional issues: “Just breathe, that’s what humans do.” They’re slowly and intentionally enculturating themselves into the world they want to belong––earth.

Yet it’s setting up Maggie and Nina that makes Aziraphale and Crowley start thinking about their relationship as a human construct.

Because fundamentally, Aziraphale and Crowley are not human. Like Neil Gaiman tells us constantly, they can’t be defined in human terms when it comes to gender and sexuality. They can shift and move through each and any of those markers at will, purely for the pleasure of the thing: “angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.”

IMO that makes them originally asexual, in the sense they were created without the need for sex. And it makes them fundamentally transgender and genderfluid, because while on earth, their sexless, eldritch spiritual bodies take on human, gendered forms and clothing. What gender (and sexuality) they identify with while on earth varies through the eras. Crowley definitely has a fluid gender identity, while Aziraphale appears to have settled on gay man (aka THE southern pansy) for his internal typology (although all of these identities are subject to change).

In the midst of all this fluidity, it’s no wonder Aziraphale and Crowley haven’t thought of their relationship in human terms before. There’s just so much different in them and their bodies than what they see in humanity. And there are no books and songs that show the kind of love they have, in the malleable, sexless bodies they have, with the background they have; it’s all ineffable.

Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t start out thinking they were in a romantic relationship. Whatever feelings they had were long repressed, redefined, and shuttled away. But they did love each other, without question. And it was that love which scared them, because it was bigger than anything they saw among humans, a love that was beautiful and blasphemous and unfathomable.

Kinda like what David Duchovny said about Mulder and Scully in The X-Files, “I don’t know if they’re in love. In a way, their relationship is deeper than that, because they cannot live without each other.”

Now take this profound, ineffable love and drop it into the little boxes and labels human culture has created for itself.

Full disclosure: I’m an asexual demiromantic person in a queerplatonic relationship, so I’ve done a fair bit of research on what romance is and how the rituals of romance are, in many ways, social inventions that vary from culture to culture. There’s love and then there’s romance, and they don’t always overlap. So my interpretation of Aziraphale and Crowley comes through this lens and the fact that Neil Gaiman has affirmed the validity of an ace-spec reading on our ineffables.

Which brings me back to my thesis: That only now are Aziraphale and Crowley thinking of themselves as a romantic couple, precisely because they are interfacing with humans and taking on their social rules.

I like this one asexual person’s description of their experience, which feels very much like our ineffables (from a very good article, I def recommend):

If there is a border between friendship and romance, then in my internal landscape, it goes right through a misty forest where no one has ever bothered to place signs.... Neither of us had intended to start anything even vaguely romantic, but the activities we did and the intense kind of immediate connection we had was coded as romantic in our culture.

That’s what Crowley realizes when Nina confronts him about his relationship to Aziraphale.

“It looks like that from here.” What Crowley and Aziraphale share is beyond definition, but Nina cannot imagine the anything beyond the human labels she was taught. The tragedy of an everlasting love is that it can only be conveyed properly to other humans if it is cast in such small human words––partner, boyfriend, husband.

Because when Crowley denied those human roles for Aziraphale, Nina slid down the path of thinking Aziraphale was just his “bit on the side,” because there were no labels left she could imagine for them. If you don’t put a word to it, it’s not real.

That’s the purpose of labels, to culturally validate a person's identity. Labels, of course, DO NOT create reality; people's experiences are always real, in all their varied ineffability. But labels allow a space for culture (ie other humans and political and legal society) to recognize formally your lived reality.

So Crowley started really thinking about him and Aziraphale, about the ineffable love between them and realized that in human terms, those would be the things he’d call Aziraphale, because those were the words that gave Aziraphale that place of importance in his life.

But with that realization comes all the human trappings and behavioral patterns around those words (the candlelit dinners, dramatic rescues, drinks at the Ritz, etc.) which Crowley had never thought of before, and yet… maybe romance is what he and Aziraphale have been doing all along.

That’s why this season centered so much around Aziraphale and Crowley using cultural artifacts (film and literature) to understand romance, because romance is so deeply socially-defined.

Aziraphale himself has been leaning hard into the romantic social cues (he’s more well-read in the cultural trappings of romance than Crowley is), especially post-Blitz. But when he watches Maggie and Nina dancing, he works up the courage to do something with Crowley that’s even more explicitly loaded as “traditionally romantic” than anything he’s done up to that point.

Because while risking their lives for each other and defying everything for each other is love in its purest form, dancing (specifically in Jane Austen’s world) is a public performance coded for potential marriage partners. It's an intimate ritual of the entire body. (And in British slang, dancing has been used as a euphemism for sex.)

Crowley's "We don't dance" is really telling, because it shows Crowley’s awareness of the unknowable devotion between them vs the human roles Aziraphale is asking him to fill, specifically its physical aspects. Aziraphale is asking to make their relationship more public, more physically explicit, more coded as romantic in a setting specifically intended to couple individuals.

While Maggie and Nina inspired Aziraphale to progress their relationship into a publicly physical direction, Maggie and Nina inspired Crowley to think of the emotional implications of their human roles: the commitment, security, and monogamy of a husband, a partner, an us.

That’s what he decides after Maggie and Nina confront him in the end. “You never say what you’re really thinking.” He wants to codify his relationship so they each become responsible to one another. Aziraphale has always been his soulmate, the one he could always rely on. But he wants to place a word and a role to their love that will bring with it Aziraphale’s commitment and dedication to him.

And that's another reason why Crowley kisses Aziraphale, because he knows Aziraphale was willing to make their relationship physical, and he wants that, too. To consummate this bond in the way humans do.

But Crowley doesn’t really know how to kiss; he’s not as worldly as he makes out to be. (It’s Aziraphale who owns the gun, and Crowley who’s never fired one.) He uses the kiss as a tool to get across to Aziraphale what he wants for them, in the physical language Aziraphale has been using, because "one fabulous kiss and we're good," right?

But it doesn’t work, because real life and real emotions don’t work like that; life and love don’t follow a script, despite the novels and plays and songs.

Aziraphale and Crowley spent this entire season trying to figure out what their relationship is and what they wanted out of it, trying to make sense of the unfathomable thing they share and the human implications of it, and not quite landing on the same page.

Something about FNAF 3 and Fazbear Frights taking place in 2023 in our current social media landscape

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 ✨

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.

Not that Israel ever stopped but Israeli officials have announced that their focus now is on the city of Khan Younis which is in southern Gaza, the exact area Israel and their fanbase were adamant that Gazans should "relocate to" for safety.

700 people have been killed by Israeli shelling in the past 24 hours.

This is another reminder that Israel will make up lies as they go about their evil agenda and if you're dumb enough to believe any of them, you have made yourself complicit in enabling this genocide.

Important thing to remember: the only reason the number of deaths in Palestine are going down is because there isn't enough people to kill.

Read that again.

The only reason the number of deaths in Palestine are going down is because there isn't enough people to kill.

The genocide is still happening. The cruelty and inhumanity is still happening.

People are not numbers.

It is time we stop treating them as such.

Free Palestine.