#this flashback scene means so much to me

[sennqu]

i think about this passage every day actually

#even though i have the viz physical copy right in front of me i prefer this fan translation so much more #the use of the word 'talent' and how it isn't any natural talent in the game that akira's dad praises him for #but his love for the game and his drive to work hard #like ugh. i love it so much #this flashback scene means so much to me #i love how akira is like shown to be this go prodigy. a natural genius relative to his peers #but we see from akira's perspective that in his story‚ he is the hard worker to hikaru's literally supernatural talent at the gamr #*game. like. ugh. the role reversal!! it's so good. hikago is so good you guys #ku blarghs #hikaru no go

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

You can wash off the makeup, but the mascara still runs.

[First] Prev <—>Next

#Poorly Drawn MDZS #MDZS #wei wuxian #season 1 #This is the scene in every highschool drama where the MC overhears someone talking abt them in the bathroom #I was trying to go for a 'your cringe' -esque crying face but i think ill save that for a cloud recess flashback #Yeah i could have added more context here #yeah im following rule of funny 99% of the time for this project #I love how this is set up without really going into too much detail about the past here. Its a secret torture tool for later angst #by this I mean WWXs guilt #Also; if im planning this correctly-this comic comes out the day of or the day after I have a funeral to attend so...me too buddy...me too. #Onwards to ep 3!

[carefulfears]

mulder and diana literally have the most intense divorced energy anyone could ever have...they have the chemistry of two people who've been married for decades and maybe don't wanna be married anymore, maybe aren't married anymore, but once you're married you're grandfathered in. you're always married. haven't touched each other in years, go most days not even considering the other, but owe each other something, and aren't sure of what it is. diana lies and lies and lies to his face, and then dies to save him. she feels entitled to him, she knows what's best for him, what's his is theirs. always. she was there when he got it. she helped him build it. (she tells him herself: "don't forget that"). so much of what she does appears as she's trying to establish a claim over him, but she doesn't have to try. she just is. she's irreproachable. you don't talk about the wife. (and you don't talk to her, as scully and diana arguing is met only with mulder's impatient, "scully...scully...scully.")

any time she comes up in conversation, his friends are uncomfortable. i love the way byers goes "well....yeah?" when scully asks if he knows diana. he says it like he's surprised that scully didn't know about her. when scully won't stop pressing mulder about diana in one son, all three of the boys tense up. the camera keeps going to their reactions. (you don't talk about the wife. they were there. "i always wondered why they split up.")

scully says "special agent diana fowley" as though maybe if she had one more title to throw in, she would disappear. diana says "fox" like she has something to prove. mulder says "diana" like it communicates everything he doesn't say. and in a way, it does. the first time scully heard him call agent fowley "diana," she knew.

#just because it isn't warm doesn't mean dd and mimi rogers didnt have chemistry #they have the chemistry of two people who played a married couple in a movie that ends with religiously motivated murder/suicide #they have cold ancient unsettling chemistry #watch any scene between the two of them and tell me it doesn't feel exactly like your parents silently moving through the house. saying #what they aren't saying #txf.txt #diana #the direction and camera placement in 'one son' frames scully as SO small #especially in that argument scene #they filmed it from mulder's eyeline/perspective #whereas typically scully's side would've been shot at her level (over his shoulder) or they would've put her on the box #but it's set up to where she is so small in front of him. and she FEELS small. and she is small. she's disadvantaged. #and it isn't fair. because where the fuck was diana? does having started it count more than following through? does having been there first #when gibson said that scully doesn't worry about what ANYONE thinks. 'except for her.' #what diana thinks matters. she's this looming figure with so much influence. and she IS irreproachable. #he won't let a word be said about her. she won't let anyone else have final say over him. #and more than anything else that's why i think they were married. more than the wedding ring in flashback episodes. more than the tension #they have this territoriality that feels very specific to divorce

[insert-neologism]

bad astrology by flower face

#yellowjackets #jackieshauna #ITS DONE OMG ITS FINISHED #what do I do now. with my life (ranking) #also ive decided i am gonna do literary analysis. on all of em #literally i have NO idea if anyone cares. well. i do bc I care and tbh that's enough to me #<- guys look im living so healthy #anyways this was a blast #hope somebody has at least discovered flower face trhu me bc its one of my fav artists #mitos incredible life #mine art tag #also im sorry the like long scenes 3 and 4 arent on beat :/ i love that song but it has so long instrumental stuff and idk what to do there #ALSO!! i had it all planned out like at least half in my docs (like always) #and then in the middle i was like 'omg what if I only show jackie-after-the-argument and shauna-after-jackies-dead' #(excluding the argument and the flashbacks (they used to hear us thru the floor)) #which was. restricting. very much #also meaning was changed (originally wanted jackie to have the line 'idc if ure not made for me' but the only scene i could think of was th #ure hungry for and that was the next scene already so.) #anyways this was originally gonna be lottienat before i started with The Shark In Your Water #bc I thiught it fit them SO well. (still do) but now I like have to get away from the jackieshauna thought and then ill do the lottienat #probably #omg also I want everyone (who has read this far. whoever would do that) to know i was running on like 25 screen #recordings and 3 jackieshauna scene packs form yt #that's why. I dknt have that many clips alright im not using like 10 scenes over n over on purpose #gotta go but im gonna make a wrap post thingy once im back slay #no actually I get like average 7 notes (<- that's a lie Idk bc I didnt count) but im proud of myself this is amazing #ive wanted to do smth similiar alr #but it was some album by alec benjamin and a different thing for every song (like a poem‚ a painting or a play) #but I lost motivation this is the first thing that i actually pulled though all the way I think #jackieshauna: The Shark In Your Water

[frecklystars]

sorry for the long ass post but this has always my favorite scene in the entire film - for obvious reasons - and im so glad greta talked about it and the way she worded it made me laugh so hard i had tears in my eyes. haha... god. my boyfriend sobbing his eyes out over the metaphorical crusts on his patriarchy sandwich......

#i dont think ill ever love anybody quite the same way that i love Ken #because he came into my life during a time when i was like. dying. not in a haha millennial way. i was genuinely fucking dying. #he is so. special. to me. he is so... everything to me and i truly mean it every time that i say it #i miss and love him so deeply so WHOLEHEARTEDLY *EVERY* single day #and i didn't used to be able to do that anymore! but he!! HE made me feel SAFE again and thats INSANE #because i was SO UNSAFE for SO goddamn long! and the feeling of safety is STILL unfamiliar to me and foreign and horrifying #but he's constantly such a Safe character. Barbie too even moreso. and it's so refreshing after feeling Unsafe for so. long. #i spent over a year feeling like my whole world had ended and i was destined to die but then he! shows up! in my life! #and no other character was able to spark life back into my heart the way he did #AND I HAD *TRIED* I had tried so hard to get into old special interests and find new ones but NOTHING worked #i was just an empty husk. just a shell of a person having flashbacks *constantly* #feeling unsafe *constantly* suffering *constantly* every single second i was awake i was in so much pain #and then every time i'd sleep i'd have the goriest nightmares about all the abuse i was put through and all the F/Os i'd lost #but then Ken Carson plucked a star out of the sky and said 'hey sweet girl you don't know me but i miss you and love you' #'and barbie is here and im here and allan is here and everyone loves you already. we're so happy to meet you' #'and everything is gonna be okay because we've got you! we came for you! and we will fight for you!!' #and then hearing greta comment abt this scene made me laugh so hard and then it hits me. i laugh now. #i laugh so often because of This Dude. i didnt used to be able to laugh before but now i laugh like i used to #i used to say all the time about my past main F/O i had lost from abuse from an IRL person 'i will never love anyone more' #and true i will never love anyone more than i loved my starlight. but here is the thing #i will never love anyone the way i love Barbie. i will never love anyone the way i love Ken Carson #because it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to feel joy for so long and it was. THIS MOVIE that brought me back #when this movie is so full of the most specific triggers. colors. clothes. yet i push thru it every time #and its because these characters make me feel THAT safe!!!! like if i see a trigger i tell myself that's BARBIE'S Thing. and Barbie is safe #ive never ever once had a flashback during the barbie movie NOT even once even tho logically i Should. but i dont. #because these F/Os are like!!! sweet girl!!! we've got you!!! and i'm like yeah you sure do now don't ever let me go #god i cry my eyes out every single time i think about this i need to sleep LMFAO SORRY FOR THE LONG RANT #love notes #💕 I'll fight for you!! - ̗̀🐎🏖️✨ ̖́-

[cakepoppresent]

Fun Fact: Despite them being known as THE childhood couple in Windenburg. A lot of boys still tried their luck with Grayson in school but Gideon handled that with a swiftness. Su is on thin fucking ice, he better be lucky Gideon has his focus on something else rn

#i love them so fucking much. #They are - and I mean this literally - EVERYTHING to me #my sims #extra #extra content #i wanna do a flashback scene of them.meeting as kids and again of gideom dealing with boys who dont know thier place #ts4 black sims

[cherrymagik]

well i dont know what i was expecting 😐

#[SPOILERS] #like bro why did we need to have another r*pe scene inserted like idk it feels so random #i mean i wasnt expecting much and i thought that when people talked about it it was just in the flashbacks but NOOOO #like my expectations were low enough already but man. can't believe they could be disappointed 😐 #this book has me swinging from ''its so good'' to ''its so bad'' every couple of chapters #rape tw

[dirt-str1der]

Love all the randos in y0 making fun of majima for being skinny calling him shit like stickman and other insulting things i forgot and they make sure to really cement that majima is your wireframe protagonist and then he takes off his shirt and hes literally normal shaped. Bullshit i want to see a scarecrow i dont like his beefy body , you hyped me up only to lie to me

#Yakuza loveblog #this is a loveblog becUse i likehim #my dog is curling up does anyone care ? does anyone care that ollie looks so cute and baby like ? ... #i hate it whenever majima puts on his glasses because i always want to peel his eyelid open #just had to survive a whole segment of him wearing those slutty translucent shades #and from the side you can see a bit of his left eye and like nghh i want to play with the loose skin so bad #i went back to edit my original post to say more and completely lost this train of thought #but like i would love for kiryu and majima to have drastically different body types. they already have incredibly different fighting styles #i want kiryu to be barrel shaped ........ i want majima to only eat properly when hes with someone he likes (which is never back in y0) #i made him run across the city to enter. resturant and eat two quail eggs #it was because i wasnt very injured but its still an extremely funny thing. to happen #now which would be sadder ... that majima literally cannot gain weight or that his appetite was completely shot after his time in the hole.. #i mean he was alwys kind of bony as seen from the flashback scenes .... i need him to be skinnier ............ #you should be able to wrap your arms around his waist twice over hands wrapped to your shoulders #you guys have no damn clue how much it turned me on to see his skinny little wrist just hanging limp in a manacle. enough space to clamp bot #in one cuff ...... his hands look huge compared to how tiny his wrists are ... need him to be skinnier ..!!! #im so obsessed with his body i want to get inside it and i dont care how .... i want to watch him eat ... i would like to feed him from my #hand and feel his shitty moustache graze my palm .. it was a pleasure to have your son on a leash #i want to see skin stretched tight over his shoulders i want to chew on him ... goe the. the last time i liked a skinny guy ws ... oh my god #it was all might

[teruthecreator]

the general plotline from wolf -> jamba -> cowboy -> awkward is one of my fav parts of wolf

#ignorance cloud on #that and the partyisntover/campfire/bimmer -> ifhy -> pigs plotline #to me the intro of the album just makes so much sense. like we have this cinematic intro that then leads into the kinda fun/funny scene #that shows you all the necessary characters (wolf sam and salem) along w all the side characters #then we get an aside from the quote unquote ‘villain’ of the album and his perspective on things #which then has an immediate tie into a flashback scene establishing why sam is so protective of salem and wants wolf to stay away #it’s like. a very clear story up to that point! then we kinda lose the plot for a bit until the other plotline i mentioned #bc while this album is a concept album w a general story it kinda fluctuates between like. #tyler himself and the characters of wolf and samuel (which some can argue are just two different aspects of himself since that’s basically #what wolf is already as established through goblin) #anyways. that’s why i say wolf is one of my favorite writing albums bc like. the way the story flows helps me regulate my brain #IGOR has a more concise story imo but i like wolf just a bit more in terms of structure #like IGOR overall has my favorite themes and like characters. but wolf has an interesting story structure #sorry i have to be insane abt tyler the creator it’s almost july which means it’s almost new album season

[matt-mercer-wannabe]

They managed to make the sunken tomb even more heart wrenching than in the stream

#I’m actually shaking holy fuck #tlovm #tlovm spoilers #vex’ahlia #vax'ildan #vox machina #the twins mean so much to me guys #all of those flashback scenes really got me in my feels

[fruit-colored-ninja]

Ninjago has this habit of reusing scores sometimes, especially in action scenes where there isn’t really anything super personal going on, just generic fighting, and that’s fine, most shows do that to some extent. What isn’t fine is when the score they reuse is from Zane’s death scene against the overlord, that music is burned into my brain and it never fails to give me wild amounts of whiplash when they try to sneak it into like. random battle moment number five

#im not talking the flashback music here just to be clear i don’t mean his theme i mean the music that plays leading up to those moments #they do it in season seven when they go back in time and in season fifteen and it knocks me wildly off balance each time #they also do this a lot with a specific score from season five which isn’t really a big deal #but i’ve listened to that season’s music so much i can tell the exact parts they’re cutting out so you can’t hear morro’s theme #which always makes me laugh #there’s also this one scene in season six i think. where the garmadon + lloyd scene sneaks its way into a jay and nya scene #and that’s the only one that i’m really like now Why did we do this because like. that’s a THEME right there #zane’s music is just battle music that i’ve inextricably associated with his death scene. a little questionable but i can see how they got #there #but yeah. soundtrack rant over.

[thschei]

Translation here

Of all that shined, none of it was useless As if I had it all in my hands, I loved everything Old clothes that just took up space... Why didn’t I throw them out Instead of holding onto them? Throw it away It’ll just be baggage anyway I’ll just pick out a few things I need, and Throw it away So I can forget you Empty closet The scent of the memories I’ll empty it all out And fill it up again with new things So I can't ever take out the old ones again This pain is too out-of-season to be crying over... This faded scent is only recalled from my memory Empty hangers, in a room that’s as big as the universe It’s time to admit that it’s time to let you go Trapped in our black and white film Of wearing your t-shirt and watching movies all night Thoughts of you swallowing me up As I wait for you, who would never come back I broke down, but I still couldn’t let you go

#erin talks #video #erin's music rec tag #I think this is my fav anda song #it's so . sad #when u got that trauma where ur first interpretation of every break up song is that it's about death #I wanted to do a jackieshauna edit to this but I'm not really sure #like there's a few scenes of them in bedrooms and adult shauna reminiscing while looking at mementos (double meaning) #I'm not sure if it matches what's in my mind's eye yknow #and unless ella comes back for more flashbacks/hallucinations I'd rather use the limited scenes we have for an idea that #wouldn't make me feel so neurotically perfectionist lol #Youtube #oh also I adapted the translation a bit to sound a little more natural #I tried to look at a dictionary & not shift the meaning too much #bc I'm not fluent & didn't want to bother my krn friends for their input #but there's only 1 translation I could find so I couldn't be choosey #save tag

[freakinhorse123]

yk when you write the most heartbreaking scene and you’re like

#and what makes it worse is that on its own this scene is quite nice and heart warming but in the long run it is so heart breaking and angsty #mickey and vivienne you mean the world to me #mickey is a superhero with healing powers and vivienne is a supervillain with mind control powers #n he helps her out of a dark place and he brings back her faith in heroes with just how nice he is and i love them so much #and im writing a flashback scene (yeah flashback) just after their daughter hope is born #n she’s worried she’ll fuck up and he’s like ‘hey we’re doing this together remember’ #and he says smth like ‘if you mess up then we can fix it together like we always do’ evem though he’s a lil fucked up too #and its like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[5ummit]

AO3 Ship Stats: Year In Bad Data

You may have seen this AO3 Year In Review.

It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!

Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.

I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.

Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.

Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:

Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:

Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?

Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?

Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!

If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.

At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.

The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.

Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).

Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works

Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works

This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.

How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.

With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):

The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.

Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.

To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.

#ao3 #ao3 stats #psa #my words #fandom #I doubt anyone is even going to read this but I needed to get it out of my system and at least try to stop this from spreading #if you know me #you know I get Big Mad about misinformation #don't take anything at face value #do your own research

[microclown]

I was rewatching s1e3 and something finally clicked for me..

Please forgive me if this seems obvious to you. It helps me to type out my thoughts, but I'm sure I'm just an idiot and no one else needs this explained to them, lol. That said - I was always slightly confused by the emotional weight of the holy water arc during the flashback sequence. Particularly I was confused by how angry Crowley got when Aziraphale referred to their relationship as fraternizing in the 1862 fight. I mean, "to associate or form a friendship with someone, especially when one is not supposed to" is exactly what they are doing, right? So why the 80 year breakup?

Crowley says he wants the holy water for if "it" all goes pear shaped. The phrasing is necessarily vague, and could mean lots of things. Since I know what he eventually uses it for, I was thinking about it in the context of Armageddon, or maybe more generally and vaguely about Crowley not always choosing to go along with Hell, and associating with Aziraphale. But there was not much reason for Crowley to already be thinking about Armageddon back then.

As we know from the full diary entry Neil posted, the timeline of the Edinburgh entry, and the cut bookshop opening scene, it seems like Crowley and Aziraphale were spending A LOT of time together by the 1800's. When Crowley is pulled back down to Hell in 1827, he learns that Hell is paying more attention to him than he'd previously thought. Crowley realizes at this point that spending so much time with Aziraphale is actively putting him in real danger. He recognizes that, and instead of breaking things off, or seeing Aziraphale less, he doubles down. If this relationship is dangerous, then he wants the tools to fight for it.

That's what I think I didn't get about the holy water request. It's not just general insurance, it's specifically insurance for if Hell finds out about him and Aziraphale. It's also a super vulnerable request because in making it, Crowley is openly acknowledging how important their relationship is to him. Aziraphale casually brings up the arrangement at the beginning of the conversation, and that's part of it, right? Because the whole basis of their relationship is the arrangement. It continues to be the pretense under which they meet, despite the relationship clearly having developed beyond that. And the arrangement, as Crowley proposed it in 537, is born out of convenience, and the assumption that Heaven and Hell would never notice anyway.

Crowley's request for insurance breaks that facade. He's acknowledging that it's not convenient, or safe, but he wants to do it anyway, despite the risk.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, is not ready for the screen to be taken away so abruptly. To make it worse, he assumes Crowley wants the holy water as an escape, rather than a weapon. Suddenly he is confronted with both the danger their association poses, and the idea that Crowley might choose to take his own life. He can't imagine the guilt of being directly responsible for the latter.

I also think the strength of his own emotional response to the thought of losing Crowley catches Aziraphale off guard. He hasn't admitted to himself how much he actually cares, and it scares him. Worrying about Heaven is more comfortable and familiar, so he falls back on that and switches to "If they knew I'd been... fraternizing!"

But bringing up the threat of Heaven reads to Crowley as Aziraphale saying "You may be willing to put yourself at risk for the sake of our relationship, but I am not." The word choice of "fraternizing" comes off as a dismissive and demeaning way to describe a relationship that Crowley just admitted he would risk his life for.

It's an unintentionally deep cut when Crowley is already at his most vulnerable, and so he lashes out. As far as we've seen, this is possibly the first time Crowley has truly lashed out at Aziraphale. So yeah, 80 year breakup makes sense!

And what makes this so much worse is what happens next. Crowley reaches out again in 1941 with a dramatic gesture (rescuing Aziraphale from the Nazis, saving his books). It's clear they've missed each other. They don't discuss the fight, but it's there subtextually. Aziraphale, tentatively and thrillingly, refers to them as friends, for the first time ever. He tells Crowley that he trusts him.

And then, that very same night their worst fears are confirmed. Just when they've finally reconciled a fight over the dangers of their relationship, and just when Aziraphale has finally admitted that it is not a relationship of convenience, but genuine friendship, they are exposed. Crowley is going to face punishment from Hell, explicitly for being Aziraphale's "trusted confident", and he doesn't have insurance. If Aziraphale's trick hadn't succeeded, Crowley would have had no way to protect himself.

idk it just makes me feel things ok

#good omens #ineffable husbands #aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow

[brainwormcity]

I've seen people remark on how awkward the 1967 scene is and that is so frustrating because, for me, it is one of the most emotionally resonant flashbacks in the entire series. It is so multifaceted and ripe with implication and that assertion is baffling. As though just because this conversation appears to be hard for them, it must mean that there has to be some sense of weirdness or awkwardness between them?

This scene feeds heavily into my theory that 1941 ended in some sort of aborted romantic moment between the two, most likely initiated by Crowley. Aziraphale can barely stand to look at Crowley because the very first moment he looks him in the face, he can't stop himself from giving him this hooded eyes, barely contained look of longing.

The next thing we see is Aziraphale immediately launching into a statement about his fear for Crowley's existence that is as brutally sincere as it is heartrending. His eyes are wide, his voice is heavy with emotion, and it's clear that he is terrified beyond belief to lose Crowley. Even as he acquiesces and gives him the holy water, you can see that he wants to take it back and deny him it all over again.

Then, of course, Crowley asks if he can give him a lift, which is definitely something that they both know is a totally different question than what lies on the surface, given that they're mere feet from the bookshop and at first Crowley frowns so deeply that it's almost cartoonish but a moment after Aziraphale turns him down you get this glimpse of very real sadness:

Aziraphale sees it for what it is and in an attempt to comfort him, without being able to do what currently seems impossible to him, shares a fanciful but resigned fantasy about spending time together unbothered and unrestrained, all to the tune of these tight little, loving smiles:

When he asks again, you can just see Crowley's desperation for Aziraphale not to go. It's hard to say how long they'd been apart, but it's safe to say that for them, that previous interaction likely is very fresh in their minds.

Aziraphale has always been more fearful than Crowley when it comes to their feelings for each other. You could even potentially look at the holy water as a metaphor for their relationship. In his expressions of concern about The Arrangement, Aziraphale has always been remarking on how Crowley could be destroyed, similarly to his words here. So when he's telling him, "You go too fast for me, Crowley," what he's really saying is, "I'm terribly afraid and I'm not ready to take that step if it means that I could lose you." And it's plain to see by the wistful look on his face that it pains him greatly to say it:

The scene so quickly cuts to Crowley looking intensely at the holy water after Aziraphale has left the car (as if trying to convince you that that was the real point of the scene) that it's easy to miss this devastated expression on Crowley's face:

There's no look of perceived rejection on his face. Just a somber look of resignation. There are so many barriers in front of them, and I think that Crowley was willing to risk it but understood that Aziraphale wasn't ready to.

This is the most honest and laid bare we ever see these two be when it comes to their emotions. There's so much being said without being said and even their actual words (i.e. Crowley remembering exactly the amount of time when the 'fraternizing' conversation happened) are so full of emotion that it might even be a bit hard for some people to watch.

It's not awkward. It's just that the scene is just so incredibly earnest and heavy with coded language that it's easy to be swept up by the fact that the two aren't engaged in their typical banter and bickering. What we truly have here is an incredibly difficult and loving conversation between two people who are stuck in a seemingly impossible situation.

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #aziraphale x crowley #michael sheen #david tennant #good omens meta #abel talks meta #good omens through the ages #good omens 1967 #signed by an autistic pwBPD with a penchant for over-analyizing tone and body language #anthony j crowley #you go too fast for me crowley