the album is brutally honest, satirical, a bit cringe here and there, depressing and experimental at the same time, I would not side eye anyone for saying "I don't understand this" or "this isn't my cup of tea" or even "what the fuck is this" because it's obviously not a 1989 or midnights kind of album for everyone. I understand why she said she "had to put this out" but while she is at the peak of her career, she released an album that is not for beginners nor really for overall critics, it's knees deep into the taylor swift lore and probably the most herself an album has ever been, that does not mean it is a masterpiece but it makes it so insanely special
something is so incredibly endearing, emotional, and beautiful in percy/walker’s final narration of saying “if you feel like you don’t belong in this world, then you might be [a demigod] too” which highlights so perfectly the thesis of the books in the first place! which is love and home for people who feel different!
it’s especially important to consider the origins of the book being rick’s son’s adhd and dyslexia, and rick wanting to create a world which gave meaning to these facets of his son that society has deemed hindrances. so when other kids out there who feel different— whether because they’re queer or have learning disabilities or they look different— are drawn to that world, to have the material explicitly include you and welcome you into the world instead of spinning that concept on its head and bragging about how widespread its fame is and how it’s for “everyone” is so important and life changing. like, things don’t have to be for everyone! this media so specially dedicated to outcasts and outsiders and that’s what I love <3
i think one of the reasons why crowley and aziraphale stuck together for six thousand years is because when it comes down to it, they have pretty much the same problems—they're just at entirely different stages of dealing with it.
aziraphale sees god and wants to be what he thinks she wants him to be. everything they've been told as angels amounts more or less to the same personality blue-print, and he is trying to fit himself into. unfortunately, as even he realises, there is so much wrong with the standards and ideologies, his goal is not only unachievable but also fundamentally fucked up.
his current solution for that is to compartmentalise the parts that don't make sense to him and otherwise try to get as close to it as possible without abandoning what he has of himself.
meanwhile crowley never fit into that shape to begin with, not even remotely, and he fell from grace because of it. all that pain, rejection, and suffering, but there are still standards, simply different ones compared to before. if you don't fit into one shape, you're supposed to squeeze yourself into the other—but he doesn't want to.
crowley wants his freedom, to be him, whatever that turns out to mean, and he wants aziraphale there with him, and yet he cannot fully let go of god.
they're both looking at the sky and screaming love me back.
aziraphale continues because i can be what you want me to be, while crowley says i'm still your child, i still want to be wanted but for myself—you made me like this, love me like this.
they're both terrified of the way the other is dealing with it, which is why they split; it was never about miscommunication, it's a fundamental difference in beliefs that cannot be combined.
crowley could never go back to obeying that way and aziraphale cannot fathom giving up on it just yet (though in season 3 he hopefully FINALLY will).
can we just. accept that they're both fucked up and move on?
aziraphale tried to justify god drowning a bunch of people. crowley was willing to kill a child to stop the apocalypse. aziraphale was about to let god murder MORE people and try to justify that too. crowley used the scottish gfs to prove a point and aziraphale failed to even see the point because he's incapable of being self-critical. aziraphale used a bunch of humans like puppets for a chance to dance with crowley. crowley has probably killed several pedestrians with his driving style. aziraphale cares more about his books and booze than preventing the end of the world. they both killed a BUNCH of people over the course of six thousand years. aziraphale would let the world burn just to prove a point.
they're in a complex and incredibly dysfunctional relationship and no, crowley is not secretly a good person and neither is aziraphale. neither of them WANTS to be a good person. aziraphale wants to be perceived as a good person without actually having a single shred of compassion. crowley just wants to be fucking left alone and have some peace and then do some low-level evil shit for fun.
aziraphale hasn't been listening to crowley since the very beginning and crowley does not want to be called good because he isn't. he doesn't want to be called kind because most of the time he isn't. aziraphale went back to heaven for himself and himself only and hurt crowley in the process.
they're both messy and morally grey as fuck so can we just accept that and stop trying to twist things to make one of them look better than they actually are? please?
I did an illustration for Trans Day of Remembrance today at work.
Our little community contains so much anger and grief, but it's because we love each other so fiercely. We remember our dead because their memory keeps us stubborn.
The Big Damn List Of Stuff They Said You Didn't Know
Five free eBooks on the colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine
Pluto Books Free Palestine Reading List 30-50% off
LGBT Activist Scott Long's Google Drive of Palestine Freedom Struggle Resources
(includes some of the reading material recced below)
The Cambridge UCU and Pal Society Resources List
List of Academic and Literary Books Compiled by Dr. Kiran Grewal
Academic Books (many available in Goldsmiths library)
Rosemary Sayigh (2007) The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, Bloomsbury
Ilan Pappé (2002)(ed) The Israel/Palestine Question, Routledge
(2006) The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, OneWorld Publications
(2011) The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel, Yale University Press
(2015) The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge, Verso Books
(2017) The Biggest Prison on earth: A history of the Occupied territories, OneWorld Publications
(2022) A History of Modern Palestine, Cambridge University Press
Rashid Khalidi (2020) The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, MacMillan
Andrew Ross (2019) Stone Men: the Palestinians who Built Israel, Verso Books
Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir (2012) The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine, Stanford University Press.
Ariella Azoulay (2011) From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950, Pluto Press
Jeff Halper (2010) An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Pluto Press
(2015) War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification
(2021) Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State, Pluto Press
Anthony Loewenstein (2023) The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the Technology of Occupation around the World (CURRENTLY FREE TO DOWNLOAD ON VERSO)
Noura Erakat (2019) Justice for some: law and the question of Palestine, Stanford University Press
Neve Gordon (2008) Israel’s Occupation, University of California Press
Joseph Massad (2006) The persistence of the Palestinian question: essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, Routledge Edward Said (1979) The Question of Palestine, Random House
Memoirs, Novels & Poetry:
Voices from Gaza - Insaniyyat (The Society of Palestinian Anthropologists)
Letters From Gaza • Protean Magazine
Raja Shehadeh (2008) Palestinian Walks: forays into a Vanishing Landscape, Profile Books
Ghada Karmi (2009) In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story, Verso Books
Mourid Barghouti (2005) I saw Ramallah, Bloomsbury
Izzeldin Abuelaish (2011) I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity, Bloomsbury
Cate Malek and Mateo Hoke (eds)(2015) Palestine Speaks: Narrative of Life under Occupation, Verso Books
The Works of Mahmoud Darwish
Human Rights Reports & Documents
Information on current International Court of Justice case on ‘Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem’
UN Commission of Inquiry Report 2022
UN Special Rapporteur Report on Apartheid 2022
Amnesty International Report on Apartheid 2022
Human Rights Watch Report on Apartheid 2021
Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ 2009 (‘The Goldstone Report’)
Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, International Court of Justice, 9 July 2004
Can't decide which kind of reunion kiss I would prefer for them: either sweet and slow, with lots of talking OR Aziraphale just explodes like a pressure cooker releasing all his pent up emotions and unfulfilled desires/needs at once. Anyway I just want them to smooch and hug
After rewatching the Final Fifteen over and over again, I don't think Crowley wanted to kiss Aziraphale.
Look. I know we’ve all read a lot of different readings of ✨the kiss✨ and why it happened the way it did. It’s just that none of the posts I’ve seen so far captured exactly the feeling I was reading into the scene, so I thought I might as well share my interpretation. Because I don’t think Crowley wanted to kiss Aziraphale, actually. I mean of course he wanted to, but– let me explain.
I brought gifs and a little more heartbreak :)
First of all, I do agree with most of the interpretations going around. Crowley wanting to change Aziraphale's mind? Totally plausible. Wanting to show him what he’s losing? Probably. Taking the last chance he might get to finally kiss him? Yes, please!
What I mean when I say I don’t believe Crowley wanted to kiss Aziraphale are essentially two things, one of them being that Crowley didn’t plan on kissing him. He planned on leaving.
We know this because it’s exactly what he does.
The moment I come back to over and over again is when Crowley puts on his sunglasses and heads for the door.
Look how close they are to each other. Usually, you would expect the kiss to happen in a moment like this. All it would take Crowley is to lean forward. If he wanted to kiss Aziraphale and change his mind, he would do it right there. But he doesn’t. He nods in a way that screams: Right. This is a losing game.
Aziraphale had just told him that nothing lasted forever (so why should he stay) and he already put back his wall of defense (the sunglasses). Of course, we can't tell for sure but everything in his appearance tells us that for him, the moment between them is gone. The only chance he had decided to take had slipped through his fingers. It is time to leave. So he does.
Crowley does not stop until Aziraphale cries out his name and wants him to come back. He is not held back by his own desire but by his incapability to resist Aziraphale’s cry for help. Not that these things can’t be connected – but look at his body language, look how reluctant it seems, annoyed almost.
It looks like he really doesn't want to stay. At the same time, he doesn’t want to hurt Aziraphale. He wants him to know that he cares. It’s not easy for him either. So he stays. Listens to what Aziraphale has to say.
But it hurts even more. Crowley doesn't even bear to look at him. Aziraphale just doesn’t understand him, doesn’t understand the way Heaven works, even after all these years. At least, that’s what Crowley thinks. Everything that made the air around them vibrate, every nightingale that ever sang, is now dead silent. Crowley says so himself.
This is not him pathing the way for a kiss. This is him saying goodbye.
And then he says: “You idiot. We could have been –“
Maybe he doesn’t quite know what exactly he wants to say or maybe he does but he doesn’t know how.
“– us.”
His voice is trembling. He lets the words linger in the room between them. Note how he is already speaking in the past tense. We could have been. But we’re not.
However, Crowley admits that the possibility of them being an Us was there, hence the possibility of everything that being an Us means to him. It drips from his toungue, every moment and every feeling he connects to the sense of being an Us. You have to remember the feeling to voice it, even when you do it to say goodbye.
And I think – we’re getting to the essence of this post – I think what happens is that Crowley gets overwhelmed by his own words, or rather: by grabbing his feelings and putting them into words, by the implication of them as an Us and everything he imagined it would have been for them. And what it means to lose it.
And I don’t think he consciously decides to kiss Aziraphale. I don’t think he wanted to kiss him in the sense that he didn’t want to take this step and actually do it. He had already lost.
(We could have been us but we’re not.)
They are still too far away from each other.
(We’re not. But we could have been.)
Eventually, Aziraphale averts his gaze, and turns his head to the side.
And this! This is the moment Crowley steps forward! Let me emphasize it once again because I do believe it’s crucial to Crowley's change of heart.
Aziraphale looks away. And Crowley snaps.
He snaps like a rubber band you pull at for too long, like the clip of a ballpoint pen cap you push too hard upside. It’s not a conscious decision. It’s a reflex. Like closing an app on your phone and opening it again directly after. Like someone calling your name and you turn your head in the direction of the voice. You don’t think about it. It just happens.
And I think Aziraphale looking away was the last straw that held the rubber band in place. The last thing that kept Crowley from falling once again. I genuinely don’t believe he would have kissed Aziraphale if the latter had continued to look at him. Too scary, right? Too real. Too close.
So this is the second thing I mean when I say that Crowley didn’t want to kiss Aziraphale. Of course, he wanted to but he didn’t make a deliberate decision. He just … gave in.
And when he pulls away, he knows that everything between them has changed. He waits for Aziraphale’s reaction, everything about him is tense.
And if he dared to hope for anything at all, it surely wasn’t this.
Forgiveness.
"I forgive you."
I forgive you for giving in.
Don't bother.
So Crowley does what he wanted to do in the first place – and leaves.
He didn’t plan on kissing Aziraphale. He wanted to leave, maybe even to prevent this from happening. And when it happened, I don’t think it’s because of ulterior motives like changing Aziraphale’s mind or grabbing the opportunity as it presented itself to him.
I’m not saying these motives aren’t there – in fact, I pretty much believe so! I'm just saying that maybe he didn’t think about them when kissing Aziraphale and that he didn’t decide to kiss him because of that.
Maybe this is more than obvious to everyone else already and I'm stupidly rambling to myself. Also, I'm truly sorry if I overlooked another analysis of this.
I just don’t think there was time in Crowley’s head to reflect on any of his feelings.