sarcatholic

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Its me, your feral godmother

#investing at 10744 #tumblr heritage

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Don't leave these in the tags.

May these IOF soldiers burn in the fiery embers of hell for an eternity if they aren't already. There cannot be anything else but this for ALL of them right now to repeatedly suffer an unbearable weight of pain that never ends -I cannot accept anything but their entire sadistic, pathetic, violent existences to end up in the pits of despair where they wished they never committed atrocities.

I hope these young girls and children are resting safely in peace -because this is just beyond heartbreaking.

#palestine

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I can't believe DC just went with it.

#dc metro #wmata #gay

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Just found out that the dietary calorie is still measured by burning food in a "bomb calorimeter" and then measuring the heat produced. There's no solid evidence that this method is at all equivalent to how our bodies process food (an entirely different chemical process from combustion), the accuracy of this system has been disputed for as long as it's existed, and there are no available alternatives

There are 4800 calories in a kilogram of dry sawdust even though wood is completely indigestible to humans, because calories don't measure nutritional value, just how well something burns

Nutritional "science" is pure bullshit

#nutrition #fatphobia

[sarcatholic]

OFMD S2 SPOILERS

Warning: This post contains non-explicit, brief implications of sexual assault/harassment and invasion of personal space. The subject of consent is delicate and complex and I am no expert, so if any information/opinions in this post are evaluated to be erroneous, seem careless, or cause too much controversy, this post will be deleted and apologies given.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

This post is essentially just a bunch of stating the obvious and taking in the observations of the fandom, but just want to emphasize and reiterate: Not that anyone would imagine (canonically-speaking anyway) that Stede would force or manipulate Ed into anything, but one of the loveliest parts of this scene…

…is that Stede stops when Ed tells him to stop with no sense of hurt, indignation, or bewilderment. "Yeah, sorry, I didn't...I was...thinking...no, I know."

Since the scene aired, there's been an explosion of suggestions and analyses of just what Stede had been thinking during that kiss. There's the most common assumption - of course he frickin wants this beautiful, incredible man whom he loves and who loves him back. It goes without saying that (as far as we know) Stede more than likely has only shared physical intimacy with Mary, someone he is at least fond of but clearly was never in love with. Assuming he is a person who desires and enjoys this kind of thing (and we already knows Ed does), he now has the opportunity to share it with someone he loves and adores, and by god is he ready for it. (Plus, he is all about dropping a lot of the 'gentlemanly' qualities now. Guy is kinda running off a 'successful pirate captaining' high this evening.)

But according to the fandom, his eagerness could be attributed to a couple additional reasons. First of all, he must assume Ed wants to move in this direction. Ed was ready to throw his pirate life away to run off with him to China, moving their relationship forward immediately. That's Ed's pace, Stede thinks, and now that Stede is on board and damn certain of his feelings, he might as well go with Ed's flow (kind of tossing his whole 'whim' speech out the window). He (Stede) is also game, so why not? Also, the last time Ed and Stede kissed, Stede later ran off to Mary (yes, we all know he was really kidnapped, dressed down, and retraumatized, but he still hasn't divulged that to Ed). So perhaps now with this kiss, Stede is trying to reassure Ed that he's not going anywhere this time. This time, he is all in. Another thing to consider is Anne Bonny's almost disparaging inquiry and the subsequent mockery...

As if sexual activity is the signifying feature of a romantic relationship (it isn't). So perhaps there's a modicum of pressure being felt on Stede's part here as well.

However, Con O'Niell once expressed in a panel that 'sex is sex on that ship' and love is another matter. Blackbeard has had sex before, passionate encounters, dalliances if you will... But Edward wants it to be different with Stede, something he considers might make it much deeper (and what's more, he's just not ready). So he pulls back. To state the obvious - not engaging in any form of physical intimacy is totally fine, just as passion for passion's sake (or occasionally using it as a way to express love) is totally fine; there are many different, wonderful flavors of relationships. But even the most dynamic of them has boundaries that are not to be crossed and there are agreements to be established beforehand, even with whims. At the very minimum, everyone involved should be staying safe, have personal autonomy, know explicitly what they are signing up for, and not have any kind of outside influence affect their ability to consent (if they want to give it). So, whatever the case, it's important to note is that the moment Stede feels Ed pull away, noticing that hand on his shoulder, an area of his body that Ed has always affectionally punched or patted…

…he reads Ed's signal and he stops.

And Ed doesn't apologize, he doesn't need to. Stede waits and listens and immediately accepts that he got a little too passionate and that Ed isn't ready for that yet.

To use a classic Youtube video comparison - Stede offered tea, Ed said no thanks/not right now, and that was that. But this analogy isn't exclusively applied to just sexual or intimate activity; Stede might not have even been asking for sex here. But in all relationships (whether romantic, work-related, familial, etc.) consent just to be touched in certain ways is granted differently depending on the relationship and what the involved parties agree to. This can stand out particularly in romantic pairings because the partners involved are often given permission touch more or differently than outside entities. Take for example a pair of classic scenes in the first season - it's been frequently pointed out that Ed's reaction to Antoinette invasion of his personal space…

…was violently different than when Stede waited for permission to touch his beard...

Or (going back to more intimate touches) Stede's reaction to Anne Bonny's assault...

It’s a stark contrast to how he wants to pull Ed closer. Quite frankly, if a person hasn't given you permission to touch them in intimate areas (or in most cases anywhere), you DO NOT touch them. Some may think it's daring or somehow seductive to ignore that, but it absolutely is not. Stede currently has some permission to touch Ed, but he can only go so far. Ed has boundaries and Stede should respect them. And of course, the same applies to Ed in regards to Stede. No matter how you look at it, Ed did kinda blindside Stede with that kiss...

In this case, it turned out fairly ok since Stede did in fact reciprocate Ed's feelings and responded positively (which Ed gradually gaged during the kiss)...

...but it was a surprise kiss nevertheless, and Ed's later proposal ultimately ended up leaving Stede in a bit of a panic. But now, consider that moonlight scene. We've all seen it, it's been shouted from the fandom rooftops. In these first beginning steps of their romantic relationship, both tentatively get closer until each gives his own silent consent…

This time, while Stede is willing to go farther, Ed isn't, as he's taking Stede's words to heart and trying not to move too fast again. And Stede seems to already respects those boundaries. Early on when he calls Ed out from purgatory...

...he doesn't devour Ed's mouth to try and 'smooch him out of it' like some Snow White or Sleepy Beauty fairytale. He knows he's probably not on the best terms with Ed right now and he isn't in a position to be giving Ed passionate kisses. Instead, he grabs Ed's hand and tries to guide him back. From Ed's end in the mermaid vision, MerStede never touches Ed and Ed never touches him. They draw closer slowly, tenderly, and together...

All relationships are different, but it seems the kind Ed and Stede are going for here hasn't exactly been established on the best footing, even though both know their love is reciprocated. Ed knows this. Stede knows this. It's totally ok to go slow if that's what someone needs (not stringing along now, that's different.) So for now, THIS is enough...

No hand snaking around the waist or the shoulders (a move Ed himself actually made with their first kiss). Just the feel of one another's palm in the other, the weight of each other's hand relaying all their mutual love and support. A sweet, beautiful show of respect and consideration, and it is much appreciated. P.S. Plus this is just so friggin cute...

...oh my god, these two...

#ofmd s2 #ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 spoilers #gentlebeard #consent

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✨Her✨

#good omens #fanart #good omens fanart #crowley #femme!crowley #hot as hell

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Spoiler alert: they are actually purity rings, given to them by Mary Read and Anne Bonny

Hi uhhhh they both have a single ring on their left ring fingers

#ofmd shitpost #ofmd #ofmd s2 spoilers #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #gentlebeard

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The person I reblogged this from is someone I enjoy seeing on my dashboard.

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hi! i hope you’re having a good night! i was wondering what the significance of crowleys blue shirt and red tie in the 1941 flashbacks mean? they usually wear all black, so i was just wondering if it meant something :)

It meant that Crowley was not going to let anyone mistake him for a Blackshirt during WW2.

#good omens #wwii #costumes #crowley #antifascist

[sarcatholic]

Censored because tumblr. I don’t really do autobio comics/art like this much, it’s new to me, but its kind of nice to feel like I can.

#not my art #art #body neutrality

[sarcatholic]

Thoughts on Angel Crowley & Healing from Trauma

(Minor Good Omens S2 Spoilers)

As someone who’s endured my own Trauma and dealt with the resulting PTSD without any help, watching Crowley’s journey from a joyful, silly, and entirely innocent angel to a withdrawn, lonely, hyper-vigilant demon as a result of the Fall both shattered my heart and confronted me with the fact of myself, and I’d like to talk about it. 

When you* experience Trauma, you experience an existential disorientation and a profound sense of grief over the world you thought you knew–one where you were safe and nothing bad had ever happened to you. “Innocence died screaming,” and all that.

You're also therefore mourning the loss of who you were, and struggling to make sense of who you are now. Which is why this conversation is so gut-wrenching:

“I know you.” “You do not know me.” “I knew the angel you were.” “The angel you knew is not me.” 

This dialogue admittedly still makes my eyes swim. It’s reminiscent of the many conversations I’ve had with people close to me who knew me Before and After. Not only are you grieving the loss of your own innocence, so are those around you, and it feels like you’re wearing their loved one’s face like a mask.

And then underneath the grief, there’s a river of–what you’ll later discover is misplaced–guilt. They want you to be who you were. Fuck, you also want to be who you were -- to not have experienced what you did -- but you can’t.

And when they catch a glimpse of something that reminds them of Before-You -- because it's not like that you has just up and vanished, you've just changed -- they say things like, “I feel like I have you back!” Like the After-You is a consolation prize, something to be tolerated while they wait for the Before-You to return.

It’s not malicious. They love you. They want you to be happy. But it just serves as a reminder of your loss and suddenly you’re acutely aware of how alone you are with the Thing that hurt you.

After trauma, you’re lonely and you're afraid. But those emotions make you feel quite naked, because both of those things would require you to depend on other people to feel better and, at this point, the thought of doing that is far too scary, so to the world, you’re angry. Thus begins the cyclical self-fulfilling prophecy.

And that cycle goes a bit like this: People see the mistrust and the bitterness and the volatility (the shield that keeps people at an arm's length and helps you feel safe). They don't see the profound sustained fear underneath, the desperate need to feel seen and accepted. And so people pull away.

And that real or perceived abandonment feeds the monster that’s taken up permanent residence in your ribcage and screams at all hours that you’re not worthy of love, that you’re irreparably broken, and you’ll always be alone. And you pull away from the people that love you. And the cycle repeats. And you start to believe all of the bad things about yourself that the monster tells you.

Being confronted with a character who you adore and who you also relate to closely is bittersweet in that it’s both immensely painful, but also offers you an opportunity to interrupt that cycle, to explore a different -- perhaps more forgiving -- lens through which to view yourself. To practice self-compassion by proxy, if you will. After all, we tend to extend far greater empathy and forgiveness to others than we do to ourselves.

Angel Crowley, "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,” (joycrispy) reminded me a lot of “Angel T,” or rather myself before Trauma.

And Crowley's story is tragic. I was heartbroken and angry for him; I felt the depth of the betrayal he experienced at the hands of someone he loved who he'd believed loved him; I found myself wanting to protect him, to comfort him. Crowley did not deserve what happened to him.

And, over a decade later, I realized that I’d finally accepted that I’d been an innocent, just like Crowley had, and I didn't deserve what happened to me, either.

And -- if you find yourself relating to this post -- neither did you.

Once we can tell ourselves that and actually believe it, we can start to lower the shield. We can allow people closer, including ourselves. We can bring the parts of ourselves we may have hidden away back to the surface. We can soften again. We can truly start to heal.

Crowley, at his core, remains the same. He is still kind, deeply loving, playful, silly, and – against all odds – hopeful. But his trauma has changed him; his innocence is gone.

He struggles to trust others; fears abandonment; engages in unhealthy coping mechanisms; finds it easier to prioritize and tend to Aziraphale's needs and desires than his own; and has difficulty expressing his emotions.

But he also gained an abundance of empathy, a deep love for humanity, and a strong sense of justice.

We adore Crowley exactly as he is now; we don't wish for him to be who he was before the Fall. And neither does Aziraphale.

In kind, we won’t be who we were — nor should we try to be — but we can be something new, a different version of ourselves that is equally good, equally worthy, and equally deserving of love. 

After over a decade, I think my Trauma wound has mostly healed, as much as Trauma wounds can, anyway; it’s a dull ache rather than an acute pain. Yet Crowley's story assuaged that remaining hurt like a salve I hadn’t realized I needed.

So thank you to @neil-gaiman for giving us such a beautiful story, and to David Tennant, Michael Sheen, and the rest of the cast and crew who bring the characters we love to life on screen.

Good Omens truly is a gift. May it continue to inspire us to offer kindness and love to ourselves and one another. 🖤

* I am aware that I say “you” when I should use the singular first-person “I,” but I still struggle with this when talking about my own trauma. So I’m using “you” and you, reader, will deal with it x

#good omens #good omens season two #good omens 2 spoilers #angel crowley #crowley #crowley good omens #good omens crowley #crowley trauma #gos2spoilers #go s2 #go season 2 #good omens 2 #trauma #Crowley's trauma #healing from trauma

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The thing is, I don't think Aziraphale thinks of it as changing Crowley at all. To him, Pre-Fall Crowley and Demon Crowley are the same person, kind and fun and sweet and cool and equally beloved. So to him, there should be no difference whether Crowley is here on Earth or up in Heaven with him, he'll still just be Crowley, and at least this way they would be safe and protected.

All the while Crowley sees it as Aziraphale's long-term love and acceptance being conditional (like God's that was already ripped away), that Aziraphale has just been slumming it with him being a demon bc there wasn't anything they could do about it, and that he's jumping at the chance to fundamentally change Crowley the first chance he gets.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #good omens meta #theology #ineffable divorce #gos2

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#social justice #we keep us safe

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Aziraphale wants, with all his soul, to repair something that cannot be repaired. And I'm not talking about Heaven right now.

I've read so many fabulous meta posts about people's various takes on what was going on in Crowley and Aziraphale's heads and hearts in that last shared scene. To me, ultimately it boils down to one thing:

Aziraphale wants to undo what has been done to Crowley. Not him being a demon, precisely, but him being hurt. Him being ever made to feel lonely and sad and angry and unwanted. Making him an angel isn't about giving him back a better status; it's about Aziraphale trying to undo the things that have hurt him.

But there is no erasing trauma.

Making Heaven better for Crowley, with Crowley, even if it could be done (which i don't believe is possible, and i don't think the show intends us to believe is possible), wouldn't change the fact that he was cast out for curiosity and doubt and questions. That harm has been done. Crowley has healed from it, may well still be healing -- but he has been changed by it, and there is no going back.

"It can be like it was before," Aziraphale says, and there is so much love meant in that. I can make it all better, I can undo what hurt you.

But he can't.

And when Crowley says he understands better than Aziraphale, this is what he means. Heaven will never be his home again. What happened to him can't be undone, and the place that did it and the power behind that place can't be fixed by Aziraphale.

You can't undo trauma; you can only move on.

#good omens #good omens s2 #the fall #ineffable divorce #ineffable husbands #ineffable partners

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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.

#good omens #meta #crowley #ineffable husbands #good omens spoilers #good omens meta #good omens 2 #angel crowley

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America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

#cults #tw: abuse #relationship violence #useful information

[sarcatholic]

Look, I made a suggestion box for you

#Good Omens #Good Omens Season 2 #Good Omens 2 #good omens spoilers #Good Omens Season 2 Spoilers #GOS2 Spoilers #good omens fanart #Good Omens fanfiction #Good Omens Fic