Aw, brain, no.

Person #1: *Meme about breaking news* Person #2: I can’t keep learning the news like this. Person #3: If you’re going to a circus, expect to see clowns.

But the thing is, sure, everyone on tumblr expects to see clowns.

What we don’t expect is for the clowns to do this:

roomba: [is a roomba]

demon:

roomba:

demon:

roomba:

demon: ahhhhh I see. You have heard the legend of Stabby.

You don't have to like their business but as long as everyone involved in the encounter is saying yes, it's also really not your business.

Easily.

People would report you to the police for any hint of it. Whether real or imagined. You held hands with someone of the same sex. Someone started a rumor that they saw you kissing. You bought a sex toy and the vendor automatically reported you. You clicked a web page or picked up a magazine that had a different suspected deviant on it and the shop owner or internet service provider automatically reported you. You had certain mannerisms. You hung out to much with a specific friend. You seemed too close to a family member. Literally anything.

In some cases people would literally peep through windows, listen at the door, even wait across the street for your guest to come over and then call the police to kick the door down and catch the two of you in the act.

Never forget that the Stonewall riot was started by one such raid where police stormed a gay bar looking to arrest as many "sodomy" and "public indecency" suspects as possible.

That's how. By encouraging people to barge into other people's private, consensual sex lives and make reports to the authorities. By encouraging people to lay traps so unsuspecting gay people could stumble into them. By encouraging people to stalk and harass anyone who showed any sign of 'being a pervert' in the name of 'protecting neighborhoods from predators'. By weaponizing the real concern for predatory behavior against people who were engaging in consensual intimacy in a way they happened to not like.

By doing exactly what I've been continuously saying is bad behavior that has gotten countless LGBT people jailed and killed.

Friendly reminder that on the 27th the 2022 yule goat of Gävle will be erected

Here's the link to the live streaming of the inauguration, that will start at 16:00 (+1 GMT): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFi13M4ZnKE

Let's the game begins!

Also this bit! They’re the same kind of thing. Crowley knows it, when he’s not thinking too hard about it. And Aziraphale knows it:

The difference with Crowley, though, is that he hasn't embraced bitterness like the other demons we're introduced to. He's still hurt, he's still angry with God and a dedicated up-fucker of shit, but he ultimately refuses to be soured by hatred. The other demons we see hate Heaven, hate humans, hate each other, hate themselves, and are subsumed by that. They are not evil by any inherent nature, but because they're in pain and making that everyone else's problem.

Crowley, though, has made a radical choice to love, instead. Love the world, love Aziraphale... still working on loving himself, but he's getting there.

And I use the word "choice" deliberately, because the whole point of both Aziraphale and Crowley is to prove that however much Heaven and Hell preach to the contrary, angels (fallen or otherwise) absolutely have free will. Heaven and Hell are both terrible. If Hell is loveless out of pain, Heaven is loveless out of fear (and the reason for that can be laid squarely at God's feet for failing to handle Their rebellious little shit of a firstborn with grace... but the trauma all the angels on both sides are suffering from is a whole meta in and of itself). Point is, neither of the sides have any real, substantive love for anything, but Aziraphale and Crowley choose to love anyway, and choose to act in defense of what they love. It's not so much that Crowley is closer to being a "good person" or that Aziraphale is closer to being a "bad person" than others of their kind, and more that they're both closer to being real people.

They are, ultimately, the same kind of being. Despite the propaganda of Heaven and Hell preaching that they're diametrically opposed and different from each other in every way, it's clear that neither of them has been able to look at each other and truly believe that in their heart of hearts since almost the beginning. It's the old "we're all only human" concept, but in this case the refrain is "we're all only angels." Their differences are superficial at best, and deep down, when they're not thinking too hard about it, both of them recognize that. They look at each other, and when they're not trying to cling to the lies they've been fed about "the opposition," they instinctively feel it.

It's also worth examining that, while Crowley has nothing in common, politically speaking, with Heaven, he is much closer to a human concept of what an angel should be than he is to the modern concept of a demon.

He owes something, certainly, to pre-Reformation and/or non-Christian depictions of demons as scholars and bringers of wisdom, and even perhaps a little something to trickster gods in non-Abrahamic religious traditions. But the more modern concept of a demon as a malignant entity gleefully bent on possession, death, and destruction? We wrestle with Crowley's role as a demon because that's not recognizable in him at all (and for that matter, so does Crowley, I think. "I'm just doing my job," he says, so that he doesn't have to emotionally deal with what Hell asks him to do).

But when the chips are down, we can recognize in Crowley and Aziraphale a pair of guardian angels for the whole world. Their role in Nopemageddon begins with Crowley's intercession on behalf of humanity, his pleading with God's representative on Earth to take action, to do something, anything, to save this beautiful planet that he loves so dearly. And it ends with Aziraphale convincing Crowley to put his own skin on the line, to back those words up with action and defend humanity not just intellectually but physically as well.

But, and I'm just gonna put this out there...

In Judaism, demons that simply “do evil” are incredibly, extremely rare, and actually pretty modern. Collections of historic Jewish folktales (Elijah’s Violin and Other Jewish Fairytales is a great starting place) mostly show demons exactly like trickster gods. They’re more powerful than humans but sometimes they act just like humans - but with the ability to get their comeuppance if someone wrongs them (see The Demon Princess) - and sometimes they act like trickster gods who teach you lessons about yourself (see King Solomon and Asmodeus).

Judaism doesn’t have a Satan. The angel (yes, angel) who is called “the satan” in Jewish literature is often labeled The Prosecuter, as in, the lawyer during a trial.

I would suggest the following of the show, actually:

GOmens!G-d, “the almighty”: Catholic perception of G-d

GOmens!Satan: Catholic perception of Satan

Aziraphale and Crowley: Jewish perception of G-d and Satan.

Think about it. Aziraphale is deeply loving and welcomes questions, even when they make him uncomfortable. He doesn’t recognize Jesus as divine; when Crowley asks why Jesus has been crucified you’d expect something about the biblical prophesies being fulfilled, but instead it’s “he said to be kind to each other,” which is the whole sum of Torah, as expressed by Hillel. He delights in Earth and its people; he is a constant seeker of knowledge, and while all that can be known is known by G-d, his attitude toward books is reminiscent of the good Jewish scholar. Indeed, in his complete shunning of modern technology, we can also draw a parallel to the Jewish concept of tradition and ritual among the Orthodox, which is a pretty rare thing to see in media. We even see him acknowledge his own fallibility in debate, which is something shown time and time again in the midrash.

Crowley, meanwhile, fits this on two fronts. First, two actions the Christian canon attributes to Satan are attributed to Crowley: the temptation in Eden, and showing Jesus all the nations of the world. (Jewish tradition does not hold that the snake was Satan.) To a Christian unfamiliar with Judaism, this is a way to, for lack of a better word, Satan-code him; he’s now a stand-in for Satan in the Christian eye. Thing is, Judaism doesn’t conceive of Satan the same way; he’s a judge and trickster, basically ‘tempting’ humans because, as Aziraphale points out, you can’t truly choose good if there’s no choice to be made. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. And Crowley does—you could even argue that it shows subtextually in his Hamlet miracle, given that Hamlet is about the struggle between impulses. None of the truly evil stuff can be laid at his door—he’s disgusted by Nazis, depressed by Caligula and baffled by the aftermath of the French Revolution. Perhaps most central to this concept is his prayer as he seeks to leave Earth to escape Armageddon: pleading with G-d always in the form of a question, such that this is even his own description of his crimes: “all I ever did was ask questions.” Is there ANYTHING more Jewish? Indeed, the prayer itself is reminiscent of Abraham’s, pleading for the lives of Sodom and Gomorrah: “I know you’re testing them, but must you test them to destruction?” He tempts, he tricks, but he’s not by any means “evil.”

Being Jewish but navigating in a world that is entirely based in Christian mythology is really taxing and you spend a lot of time double-guessing your media input. “Is this a Jewish spin? Nah, why would it be; it’s probably something Christian I just don’t get. But man, it sure seems Jewish, amirite? Ha ha.”