Another Shitty Blog

Pizza Index strikes again.

I imagine it would be a long, awkward, painful (at least for Coop) road dotted with increasingly significant gestures, increasingly intimate moments...but there would also have to be a sort of "healing" from the way things have been so far.

I mean, he's only stayed alive this long by being ruthless, selfish, doing whatever he needed to do to look out for number one. Falling in love with someone, caring about them, fucks that M.O. up pretty badly.

If he wants you to stick around, he has to show you he can treat you well. We know that he loves so passionately and deeply when he does, that he has the capacity for it. But, at the same time, it's so difficult for him to be vulnerable enough to show that kind of tenderness to someone again. He's confident in himself when it comes to most things, but this is fairly uncharted territory. He's not even sure he fully remembers how to romance a lady.

He never sleeps, so he always sits up keeping watch overnight. You wake up one morning to find that he's cleaned your guns, sharpened your knives while you slept. Soon, that becomes a regular occurrence. Another morning, after a particularly cool night in the desert, you find that his duster is draped over you. Low-pressure gestures like this, ones he can perform when you aren't watching, are the easiest for him at first. You always thank him for these things, but for a long while you fail to truly realize their significance. As far as you're concerned, he's just demonstrating that he finds you tolerable, which is better than he's acted towards you in the past. Maybe he's even apologizing for being shitty in his own way.

But slowly, the gestures start to happen in the light of day. He'll slow his pace to walk side-by-side with you, instead of leaving you struggling to keep up with his long strides. He lends you his hat when the scorching sun roasts your face, at least, until he finds another one for you. One day you come across an expanse you'll need to cross, but its up to your shins in disgusting muck and water. He offers to carry you across. You look at him like he has six heads, completely unsure if he's mocking you or not. You don't accept the offer...this time around.

If you're doing drugs together, he offers you the last hit, the last line, whatever. Funnily enough, this is what makes you start to realize that he may be trying to communicate something else; he's selfish about a lot of things, but his drug stash is undoubtedly the biggest. You were floored enough when he'd offered to share at all. When he makes that offer the first time, you look at him for what feels like a long while before you accept.

You also lean in and give him a kiss on his rough, pitted cheek when you take whatever it is from him, terrified that you're misreading the situation and he'll shove you away. But he doesn't; he smiles at you, a more genuine and relaxed smile than you think you've ever seen on him before. But then he looks away, almost shyly, and things are quiet again.

The AO3 Primary Ship Search add-on for Firefox (it's called AO3 First Tag Search for Chrome) adds this little checkbox to the AO3 advanced search page

And if you check the box, the search only returns fics where the pairing you entered is the first one tagged. This is better than the otp:true operator imo because it will show fics with secondary/background pairings too as long as your preferred ship is the main one.

You can even use the add-on in Firefox or Kiwi browser on Android mobile.

Have fun 😘

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

Why I believe the coffee is important…but not because it’s been tampered with. The coffee represents exactly how Metatron manipulated Aziraphale to return to heaven.

Let’s take a look back at that painful final episode.

In Nina’s coffee shop, the Metatron makes an interesting remark: “Do people ever ask for death? The name of your establishment is Give me Coffee or Give me Death. I assume they always ask for coffee.” And when Nina replies that they never ask for death, he says “No I don’t suppose they do. So predictable.”

This is an interesting line! And in my experience, interesting lines don’t show up for no reason. My takeaway from this is that it means when given the choice between a mildly pleasant thing (coffee) and an extremely unpleasant one (death), the predictable choice most people will make is to pick coffee. Here’s where things get interesting. The Metatron proceeds to apply this exact logic on Aziraphale.

Let’s fast forward just a little bit, to Aziraphale’s retelling of his talk with the Metatron. After being offered the position of supreme archangel, Aziraphale initially refuses! He says “but I don’t want to go back to heaven. Where would I get my coffee?” In other words, Aziraphle likes earth and is happy here amongst his people and things. To this, the Metatron responds: “As supreme archangel, you would be able to decide who to work with…” and says that he was looking back at his precious exploits and saw his “de facto partnership with the demon Crowley.” And continues “Now if you wanted to work with him again, that might be considered irregular. But it would certainly be within your jurisdiction to restore your friend Crowley to full angelic status.” On my first watching, I didn’t catch the threat — but it absolutely was one! Because here, the Metatron has asked Aziraphale to choose between coffee and death. He’ll have to return to heaven, BUT he’ll be able to be with Crowley! The alternative is the threat of never being able to work with Crowley again. And just as the Metatron has predicted, Aziraphle chooses coffee. Because to Aziraphale, the alternative would be inconceivable.