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ariaste · 5 years

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Hello! I wonder why you don't like fics where Crowley and/or Aziraphale summon a tube of lube? Is it the summon or the lube in general or something else?

ok i’m gonna put this under a read-more so that if y’all are not up for it, you can skip me putting my feet on the table and vaping aggressively while I blather extensively, re: My Big Opinions About Worldbuilding and Magic Systems and Sex

if you ARE up for it, WELCOME TO MY TED TALK:

EDIT: Tumblr is refusing to let me put this under a read-more????????

EDIT 2: UHGHGHGHGHHGHHHHHHHHH I am so sorry I don’t know how to fix this. >:|||| I guess here are just… all my opinions, naked in the open!!!!!! Totally discourteous to everyone trying to use the tag! I’m so sorry for my entire everything *grinds teeth*

Disclaimer: I fucking love fanfic authors, they are doing the lord’s work and I am so thankful for them. I fucking love fanfic. I love that there are a huge variety of interpretations and opinions about these characters. I think that’s a sign of the canon being Good Art, and a sign of a vibrant and healthy fandom. This is one (1) small pet peeve about one (1) miniscule aspect of the patterns I see in our fanfic. This is from me, a single one (1) member of the fandom whose opinion doesn’t actually mean shit or matter more than anyone else’s. In other words, I am shaking my fist and shouting at a cloud. THIS DOES NOT MATTER IN THE SLIGHTEST. This is a thing that is ABSOLUTELY INCONSEQUENTIAL but i still have really big annoyed feelings about it because sometimes that’s just how it be on this hot gay earth

Now let’s talk about the summoning lube thing and why it makes me sigh for two hours straight.

First off, we’re gonna have to back up and talk about The Craft Of Writing. When you do worldbuilding, any thing you put into your world immediately sparks a series of knock-on effects, like ripples in a pond. Suppose you have a fantasy world and you decide that it has two moons. Great, so what’s that do to the tides? What’s that do to the calendar system? Do they have months? Do women associate their menstrual cycle with the moons now that the phases probably don’t coincidentally line up? Can you even call it a “menstrual” cycle or a “month” when both of those words are derived from the same etymological root as the word “moon”?

Most writers conveniently ignore things like this if it requires them to go too deep and THAT IS FINE. That is SO FINE. If we had to work out every single little thing, the writing would never get done and we’d all be paralyzed in the middle of our 38402nd Wikipedia research binge.

h o w e v e r

Magic systems.

With magic systems, you do have to spend at least ten seconds thinking about it on a deeper level.

In the last decade or so, there has sort of developed a taxonomy of magic systems. If you’ve listened to the podcast Writing Excuses, you’ve probably heard Brandon Sanderson talking about “hard magic” vs “soft magic”. Hard magic has rules and limitations – potionmaking in Harry Potter, for example, is a form of hard magic. You have to do all the steps exactly right to get your desired effect, and you’re limited by the availability of ingredients, time, and personal skill.

Crowley and Aziraphale use a perfect example of “soft magic”. They just sorta DO stuff, and we never see it going wrong (except with Crowley tripping himself up, ie: with the phone system going down, but that’s not because the MAGIC went wrong, that’s just that he was a dumbass and didn’t think through what he was doing). There’s no rules. There’s no limitations but imagination. They don’t seem to run out of juice.

With a thought, Crowley can shapeshift himself at will, keep track of bullets so they don’t actually hurt anybody, hold the Bentley together in the middle of an inferno without being discorporated, exude a passive magical aura to sufficient extent that the Bentley eventually gains its own transmutation magic (Queen albums), put the fear of Crowley into his plants, and stop time. With a thought, Aziraphale can instantly switch clothes with someone, heal broken bones, execute an assortment of “too many frivolous miracles”, and keep himself and Crowley alive when a literal bomb goes off on top of them.

With a thought, they can both bring doves and probably other animals back to life (Crowley in the book, Aziraphale in the show), manipulate light, execute both minor and major acts of telekinesis, summon and transmute objects, sober up at will, make ducks sink, repair damaged objects, coincidentally arrive at restaurants just as a free table comes available, and control the thoughts, possess the bodies, and sense the virtues/vices of the humans around them. The only thing that is conspicuously implied to be out of their ability is long-distance teleportation: Aziraphale has to ride a horse all the way to Scotland for that miracle-and-temptation, Crowley has to drive the Bentley to Tadfield – both of them in these situations, had they been able to, definitely would have just Done The Thing. That they didn’t do the thing suggests that they can’t.

They are, for all intents and purposes (except long-range teleportation), all-powerful.

So.

The lube thing.

First off, it’s like…. the most aggressively mediocre, uncreative use of Effectively All-Powerful Actual Real Magic that I have ever seen, and it happens over. and over. and over and over and over andoverandoverandover, for no reason other than “this is the part of the fic where the lube happens”. It is getting to the point where I will just immediately close the tab and not read a single word more. Drives me absolutely feral with Opinions.

Here’s the thing, summoning just lube? Like, suddenly fingers sticky? Sure, whatever, fine, it’s not great but I roll my eyes a bit and keep reading. Summoning a tube, though? w h y?

This kind of goes back to the whole thing I was yelling about the other day with More Weirder Sex Please (”#transdimensional extraplanar sex or go home”)? Like, the world just sort of rearranges itself according to their passive expectations. Crowley can’t get into a car without it spontaneously generating a music player – he doesn’t even have to think about it! He doesn’t do the miracle consciously, it just HAPPENS.

So….. why are they having to think about lube? Why doesn’t that just happen passively? They can control their own physical forms well enough to sober up at will, and you expect me to believe they need to conjure some goddamn KY jelly to bone down? Some fucking Astroglide? It breaks suspension of disbelief (and since I generally ship them as “deeply romantic but asexual” to begin with, my suspension of disbelief is already hanging from rather tenuous threads already). It makes me want to take the fic author’s precious perfect face in my hands and say, “Okay, but why? What is the actual reason for this to be happening in this way?”

If they had a reason? FANTASTIC. I want to hear it! Reasons would be fascinating! Tell me your reasons for them to be doing it this way! Reasons are great!!! The whole purpose of fic is to break rules and display your arguments, yes? Give me your reasons! Show your work!

But most of the time, there isn’t a reason. They’re just writing it that way because it’s The Thing To Do, and because there are certain structures of writing smutfic that are considered mandatory (speaking of things that drive me absolutely feral with Opinions, don’t even get me started on “one finger, two fingers, three fingers, cock” as a pattern that is baked into fic ACROSS EVERY FANDOM, or we’ll be here all goddamn day).

So there is no Reason. There’s just a default that we’re adhering to. Can’t fuck without externally-sourced lube!!! Even if you’re an all-powerful supernatural entity!!!! Even if, as the fandom generally agrees, you can manifest whatever genital configuration you fancy!!!!!!!!! No lube, no sex!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or the porn police will come after you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (i am not intending to function as the porn police right now in this rant. I am trying to function as the porn anarchist and free us from these bonds.)

On another level, from a writing perspective, I know firsthand how annoying it is to choreograph a sex scene. So annoying. Human sex is messy and inconvenient, so why not take the opportunity to elide all those mundane little details? They’re incredibly magical beings with passive area-of-effect miracles happening around them! There has never been a better excuse to make the sex just sort of Conveniently Happen! So is summoning a tube of lube really the most fun and exciting option you could take here? Are we spending even 10 seconds thinking about the choices we’re making or are we just presuming the default? Are we, if you will excuse the pun, making an effort?

In conclusion, let’s put it in meme form:

extremely broke: They are boning. One of them gets out of bed to fetch lube from across the room. (Yes, I have read a fic where this happened. I have stared into the abyss)

broke but slightly less so: Spontaneous lube on fingers, no container necessary!

woke: lube is simply where it needs to be, when it needs to be there (for bonus points, add: “…because we don’t actually know how human sex works, practically speaking; we just have 6000 years of gradually-gleaned knowledge, curious natures, and a shared spirit of cooperation”)

bespoke: hahaha friction burn is for mortals and suckers, just like gravity and biology and physics and the laws of thermodynamics.

galaxy-brain bespoke: Through extensive testing we have designed our own custom genital configurations that perfectly suit the particular kind of sex that we like to have

super-galaxy-brain bespoke: Metaphysical extraplanar sex, aka “The Full Milton”. (Alternatively: “here, lie down with your head in my lap and I’ll put my fingers on your temples and fire all your nerve endings for you until you beg for mercy. who even needs genitals when we can probably reach directly into each other’s brains and trigger massive overloads of sparkly chemical cocktails on command????”)

I do want to be abundantly clear about this: If you have a different interpretation, that is SO INCREDIBLY VALID. If you think they’d summon a container of lube, GO HOG WILD. But… tell me your reasoning. I GUARANTEE that the reasons for the lube are more interesting than the lube itself is. ;)

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK

(if we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended: that this cloud is very stupid and inconsequential and I am wasting my own time by shaking my fist at it)

#good omens #ineffable husbands #old man shakes fist at cloud #transdimensional extraplanar sex or go home #totally inconsequential pet peeves #ignore me #i have too many opinions about stuff #Anonymous #meta

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