Untitled

A scene from Stubborn Love, Chapter 14, by @getwrexed. they kith (kind of)

That's my 15 minutes of fame, I peaked in my life, I made those dolls and gave them to Michael yesterday evening at the stage door, I'm so happy they liked them and I'm also absolutely out of my mind. 😱

They are 2 sets, actually, for the two girlies ❣️

Anna shared this in her Insta, and I'm just over the moon and back 😭😭

****

Update: I opened and etsy shop if someone is interested:

[id: screenshots of tiktok captions. the images say, “but the only reason we still love princess diana is because she did not have the time to disappoint us.”]

begging queer kids to read up on princess diana’s involvement with the community. yes, she was a rich, pretty monarch. yes, she died young.

but the reason why queer people love her is because she used her privilege during the aids crisis to advocate for sick queer men, when very few others would - much less someone of her status.

diana spent years advocating for the health and care of queer people with hiv/aids. in 1987, at the height of the epidemic, she opened the first specialist clinic dedicated to treating aids patients (the first clinic of it’s kind in the uk).

she also fought public hysteria by hugging and shaking bare hands with aids patients, at a time when aids was thought to be spread by skin to skin contact. not only that, she visited patients in the clinic regularly and even comforted them through their sickness.

and when queen elizabeth told her to try focusing on “something more pleasant”?

diana ignored her and kept fighting.

Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention.  Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.

As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities.  This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.

When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.

Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace.  Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on.  In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.

For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you.  It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass.  All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.

*

“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”

“We’re getting to that.”  He waved.

*

The First Incident in January when, due to a serious cock-up by the church, all the hosts Father Pat received were moldering and spoiled and probably would have killed someone if he’d actually fed anyone them.  But it was the first mass of the year, when a peak number of people came in after vowing to got to church more for new year’s.  He couldn’t NOT have communion.

“I’ll bake.” offered Maria, the parish secretary and probably the best baker in the county. “So we have hosts.  Jesus will understand.”

Father Patrick, not one to pass up the chance at Maria’s cooking, immediately agreed.

A Host is supposed to be composed solely of unleavened wheat flour and water, which is why they taste terrible.  It’s a theological point of some importance relating to Exodus or something but Maria had an important theological counterpoint: Jesus both divine and loves all his children, ergo, Jesus would neither be a nasty bland cracker nor want his children to suffer as such and so instead, she made Mexican wedding cookies.

They were a SPECTACULAR hit.  Many praises were heaped upon father patrick for the Much Better Wafers and that they’d be sure to show up next week as long as Maria kept making them.  Father Patrick figuring that hey, anything that gets people in the doors is good and really, if it was turning into Jesus once inside the parishioner, did it really matter what the wafers were made of?  So he continued to let Maria bake the Hosts, and encouraged her to try out new flavors, like nutmeg and cinnamon.

This went on swimmingly for a few weeks until The Bishop showed up for a surprise visit the same week Maria decided to experiment with rainbow sprinkles.

Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”

The matter went clean up to The Archbishop, who decided that while Pat was probably right to not feed spoiled hosts to his parish, he should attend some remedial classes to remember what Communion was all about, so that if it happened again, he’s come up with a more suitable substitute.

Father Patrick returned in late March, full of spite and some fascinating new ideas.

*

“Is this where the Cannibalism happens?” Six-year-old me asked, eager to get to the good parts.

*

At his remedial classes, the teacher had stressed the importance of transubstantiation, aka “That bit where the wafer and wine, Actually, Literally, become the flesh of Jesus Christ and we expect you to swallow.”  Also on the syllabus was understanding the importance of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice.

“So, I was thinking about Easter Service.”  Said father Patrick one afternoon while dad was doing his computer science homework at the church because his dorm was a barely-standing fire hazard and the library was where you went to have sex.

“Well, we do re-enactments for christmas.  Why not on easter?  Why not re-enact the crucifixion of Christ right here? Make it real for everyone.  Trauma’s great for bonding a community together.”

“Who’s playing Jesus?” asked Maria, always one for a good laugh.

“That’s the thing- A Host, it doesn’t look much like flesh, right?  Doesn’t look like much of anything, really.  Not great for reinforcing one’s belief.

What if, instead, we- and I mean you, Maria, I can’t cook to save my life- make a man-sized loaf of bread, maybe in the shape of a T, and we have some of the boys dress up as romans and whip the bread and we pour the wine on so it’s bleeding and them- then we make a big wooden cross and actually nail the bread to it with, I don’t know, railroad spikes, more wine all over. And we raise the cross, all while telling the story of the crucifixion.”

He paused to take a drink, Maria slowly crumpling onto the floor in horrified laughter and Dad now thoroughly distracted from his homework.

“Then we lower the cross, and invite everyone who wants to take communion up to tear a hunk of Jesus off.  Just descend into his corpse like vultures.  I think that’d really be a good bonding experience for the church.”  he nodded thoughtfully.  “The hard, part, I suppose, will be finding enough romans.”

“I WANNA BE LONGINUS.” bellowed my father, barreling into the room.

And so, the plan was hatched.  Dad hit up every other guy in the Church and eventually rounded up four more romans, three of them from the Education Department of Cal Poly, and one guy from Chemistry, who just liked to watch things burn.

This, being a play, naturally meant that there was a rehearsal, and test Bread jesus.  Maria had decided that if they were going to start being extra-literal, she needed to make the most lifelike Bread jesus possible, and made a distressingly buff and human-proportioned Jesus by Advanced bread-braiding, complete with plaited hair, quail’s-egg-and-raisin eyes, bready muscle groups, and an eight-pack because why not make the lord completely shredded?*  She also made the important theological decision that since Jesus loves everyone and was happy to die in spite of all his suffering, he should be smiling, and had a toothy corn-kernel smile.  He was Wonderful and Terrifying all at once.

“Maria,” asked Father Patrick after a few minutes of delighted and horrified cooing over Jesus’ toothy grin and abdominals. “Why is he wearing a tea-towel?

“Well, he’s the Son of God. A Man.  With all that entails.”  She said, pointedly staring at Father Patrick while everyone stared at the suspiciously lumpy tea-towel.  “And he might have… burnt, slightly.”

Everyone nodded and agreed that the tea-towel was the best course of action.  The rehearsal goes splendidly and everyone agrees that this is the most delicious Jesus they’ve ever had.

*

Easter Sunday arrives and the Church is PACKED, from the more lapsed Catholics showing up for a high holiday, parents visiting for spring break and a whole horde of newcomers who had gotten wind that something was up and they ought to come.

Dad is a lanky as hell 21-year old composed mostly of technical jargon and acne but he is STOKED to be playing Longinus, the roman that speared Jesus on the cross, because he gets to do the BEST technical effect in the whole parade.  Since he came in at the end me missed a good portion of the sermon, but did hear the “oooh” from the crowd as the massive cross was dragged in by the other Romans, followed by horrified gasps and high screams and a discernible “What the FUCK” as they brought in Bread Jesus 2.0, whipping him enthusiastically, and hammering him into the cross, the sound of wine splashing onto the floor loud in the terrified silence of that Parishioners.

Finally Father Patrick gets to the part about Longinus, and Dad comes sprinting down the aisle as hard as he can, because in order for Bread Jesus to be seen by everyone, his middle had to be about 10 feet off the ground, so Dad had to run, shrieking latin curses,  down the length of the church, with a big honking spear and take a flying leap at Jesus in order to spear him in the gut.

Please take moment to imagine you are some normal god-fearing catholic who has decided to visit little bobby or maybe patricia at college and you’re all going to church together like a nice family and this Fucking madman has decided to go all Silence of the Lambs on mass and now there’s some sort of underfed translucently pale man in ill-fitting Roman armor and cape flying at a horrifying glutinous effigy of your lord and savior, with an actual fucking spear, screaming like a madman.  Don’t you feel yourself drawing closer to God already? Defensively, perhaps, like an octopus trying to ooze itself into a crevice against the horrors of the ocean.

However, two things happen that were not planned on

1. Dad misses.  In his defense, Bread Jesus is close to but not quite the size of a man- more like the size of a doughy teenager, and his middle is a small target 10 feet up in the air and dad is has a computer science minor, not an athletics scholarship.  He misses by about 8 inches and instead very solidly stabs Bread Jesus right through the groin, leaving a big hole in Maria’s tea-towel and the spear jutting out at a decidedly… attentive angle, as Bread Jesus’s Bread Dick drops to the floor with a splat.  Nobody notices this, however because

2. In rehearsal, Dad had managed to get the spear right in jesus’s navel but neither Father Patrick nor the other romans could get the wine up there to make his middle appropriately bloodied.  

Maria come up with the Genius solution that since wine is made of grapes and Jam is made of grapes, she could make a jelly-filled Jesus for Dad to stab.  There was a normal-sized test loaf and when dad stabbed it on the table, it had a nicely gooey dribbling effect.

However, this time the loaf was torso-sized, still hot from the oven and upright, so when dad speared the very end of the loaf, all the steam-pressured jam had collected at the bottom and a spray of lukewarm smuckers exploded out from bread jesus, turning the first three pews into a splash zone of symbolic entrails.

There was  a hot, sticky minute of complete silence in the church after that. 

Then, Father Patrick indicated it was time for the cross to be lowered, and continued on with the normal preparations of the Host, he himself covered in hot smuckers, as though nothing particularly ordinary was occuring, quietly kicking the bread-dick under the altar. At the end of it all, Father Patrick and invited everyone up with the Last Oration:

“Thou, O God, has kindly allowed us to have a part in this Holy Sacrifice; for this we give Thee thanks. Accept it now to Thy glory and be ever mindful of our weakness. Amen.”

…And everybody came up, shuffling like terrified zombies, pinching off tiny bits at first but then the madness took them and they began tearing apart bread jesus by the handful, weeping as they partook, scattered prayers and begging for forgiveness.  The whole congregation was kneeling about the altar, tearful and united in their guilt and their need for God.

*

“IS CHURCH ALWAYS LIKE THAT?” six-year-old me asked, absolutely stoked.  I’d convert on the spot if I got a show like that.

“No, it’s normally bland wafers and lots of chanting in latin.”

“Well that’s boring as hell.” I remember muttering and Dad snorting the coffee he was drinking out of his nose.

*

As people filed silently out of the Church to a gloriously sunny California afternoon, faces wan and smeared with wine and jam, Father patrick turned to Maria and asked “You don’t think that was too much, do you?”

“No.”  Said Maria with a sarcastic deadpan so intense it was hard to tell from sincerity.

It was the exact same tone she used when the Archbishop and Six other high clergy showed up, clutching a letter someone had written, Livid and almost foaming at the mouth, demanding to know if such blasphemy had transpired.

“No.  That’s crazy.”  She said, staring down the archbishop like he was an idiot.

“Such imaginations some people have!” Said Father Patrick, much less convincingly.

“And you-  you didn’t…  Spear an effigy of our lord and savior?”  the archbishop demanded of my father.

“Do I look like I can jump that high?”  Dad asked, having in the interim been drafted for 51 days then nearly died of pneumonia from it, and therefore no longer afraid of the Church, the Law or God.

Somewhat relieved that he’d only received the extremely detailed ramblings of a doddering parishioner, the Archbishop sat down and complemented Maria on her most excellent Mexican Wedding Cookies, may he please have another plate for his nerves? Perhaps the ones with sprinkles?

Dad went on to help build the internet, Father Patrick converted to Buddhism and Maria became a Nun.

*For those of you wondering, Jesus was made of Challah.

Useful posts on how to write comments for fanfics - [here] & [here]

On a personal note. I’ve met wonderful people throughout fandoms and by leaving comments. I’ve made great friends, some even on comment sections, as we shared our enthusiasm for the same story. 

People who like the same ships often hold similar character traits and life experiences; they’re people who would get you. The bonds in fandoms only strengthen when people meet other people as humans - and there are fantastic humans waiting to meet you. 

Leave a comment. :)

((Methodology For Data Collected

For this, I’ve used AO3, currently the most popular fanfiction website. 

I’ve taken the first ranked story in each ship, completed, rated by kudos - since bookmarks on AO3 can be set to private so the counters don’t reflect the real numbers - to reflect the stories that had the most positive feedback in their category.

For the comments, I’ve (falsely and intentionally) assumed the numbers represented are singular comments from singular, different users (tipping the scales in favor of the commenters). For Destiel, Johnlock and Spirk I had to pick the second story by kudos, since for the first the deviation error (assuming the author haven’t replied and there aren’t discussion threads included in the comments) was far too high for the ratio to be accurate, and my initial assumption couldn’t be applied. My apologies to the authors. 

as an author, you cherish every comment you receive - I very clearly remember one I got years ago on some Hetalia fic saying that I had excellent comic timing, and that they hadn’t come across that in writing before. it made me absolutely ecstatic when I first read it, and even now, probably a good 5+ years later, I remember it when I’m down about my writing. being told that something you created actually moved someone to a physical response, whether it be laughing, or tears, or anything else, is an incomparable feeling. it truly makes all the hours you spent on the piece worth it.

as a reader, lately I’ve been making an effort to comment on everything I read, and I’m not going to lie, it’s improved my fic experience tremendously. chatting with the author, mentioning what I like, what I didn’t quite get (which has on occasion resulted in the author saying, yeah a few people have said that, I didn’t quite explain that right, and rewriting the chapter) results in this sense of community, of kinship that you legit don’t get in any other fandom interaction. 

This article is part of our new column Cultus Dispatches, which looks at the history and culture of Tolkien fandom.

—

A Sudden Outcry: The Tolkien Estate and Fanworks

When the Tolkien Estate recently presented their newly revamped website, it did not take fans long to see past the new artwork and other features to find that the Tolkien Estate has a policy on fanworks. The past several days have seen a whirl of discussion about what it all means that can be distilled down to a single burning question:

Did the Tolkien Estate just ban fanworks?

In short, no, the Tolkien Estate did not just ban fanworks. The fanworks you have posted, are in the middle of creating, or are even thinking about creating are not affected by what the Estate says on their website.

The longer answer depends on if you’re interested in the just or the ban part of that question (or maybe both!). While the following is not legal advice, we hope it will lessen the worry that the existence of fanworks is in jeopardy.  As always, bear in mind that laws vary from country to country. If you have specific concerns, the Organization for Transformative Works’ legal committee, while unable to give legal advice, can answer questions you might have.

The History of the Tolkien Estate and Fanworks

I didn’t. I didn’t want to be this person. But Aziraphale is sitting RIGHT THERE looking like A TOTALLY RESPECTABLE Roman citizen circa 40 AD. Maybe the hair might be unusual, but the Romans LOVED blonde hair. They thought it was cool and foreign and exotic in sort of a sexy way.

But Crowley is so historically confused. And I think the production design is too good and Neil Gaiman is too on top of his game for this to be accidental. It must mean something. 

I - HAIR

What is on your head Crowley. Are you the emperor? Are you a victorious general currently participating in a victory parade? 

Sure, you sometimes see laurel wreathes in portraits. But FUNERAL portraits.

That crown is a symbolic thing, to celebrate your victories in life. It’s not STREET WEAR. 

And okay. It’s 40-41 AD. Caligula is emperor. Military chic is in. If you’re a guy, you’re wearing your hair short and un-styled (LIKE AZIRAPHALE.) Those dramatic little spit curls wouldn’t show up until at least Nero. 

But actually, pulling back for a second - are you appreciating the absurdity that is this hairstyle? Because it took me a second to notice that only the FRONT HALF is curled.

Which is a Roman hairstyle. But it’s a Roman LADY hairstyle. 

(It tends to get called ‘Flavian Hair’ because the Flavian era ladies of the 70s-90s got pretty extreme about it, but you still had less… dramatic versions in the 40s.)

That’s you, Crowley. That’s your style reference. Honestly, if you had just kept your hair long everybody would have thought you were a cool barbarian chieftain or something. 

II - CLOTHES

The black is fine. It’s eccentric, but fine. Romans wore black. Wearing black was Cato the Younger’s *thing.* It gets associated with mourning and/or protest, but it would have been really visually confusing to have Crowley wear some other color. This gets a pass.

Nope, my question is about his articles of clothing. There’s a charcoal grey garment that seems to be a toga + undershirt. It’s looped over Crowley’s arm, which is a classic toga give away. 

That part’s fine. But over the top, he’s wearing a true black… short cape? Shawl? it’s really hard to tell, because whatever it is, he is NOT wearing it correctly (is it folded in half?) Also, that irregular red zigzag pattern is very strange and I do not recognize it from anywhere. Seriously, I can’t even decide on a continent for this garment.

III - JEWELRY

Emperor Nero usually gets credit for inventing the first sunglasses, after he started watching gladiators fight though a green gemstone. He won’t be emperor for about ten years. But hey, he probably got the idea from somewhere. And dark glasses are just a really sensible way to hide your snakey eyes. This is also the first time we see Crowley put up some proper emotional barriers, so it’s a good place for the glasses to be introduced. (@theladyzephyr has a wonderful meta that goes into a lot more detail here.) 

So the sunglasses are good. BUT THAT BROOCH.

Okay. This is Aziraphale wearing a fibula plate brooch

It’s a really Roman style, and a really Roman shape (a “pelta”)

I’ve never seen one that looks like angel wings, but a Roman citizen is going to look at that and see a soppily patriotic Imperial Eagle. How nice that this lovely man from Germania/Greece has made some money and become such an exemplary citizen!

But Crowley is wearing a penannular (pin-and-ring) brooch

That’s not roman. That’s a style from the British Isles (Irish, Pictish, Scottish, Welsh.) It says barbarian, boonies, outskirts of the civilized world. 

And nobody @ me with pictures of pin-and-ring brooches from Rome. Those are small, cheap, and undecorated. They’re the cultural equivalent of safety pins. This is patterned like a snake, and it’s the size of Crowley’s palm. 

AND THAT’S ANOTHER THING. They didn’t do snake-themed jewelry in the British isles. Snakes didn’t have the best cultural associations there, and there weren’t too many of them there to begin with. This isn’t something Crowley picked up because “hey, a snake, cool,” and then got attached too. This must have been commissioned special. 

But you know who LOVED snake jewelry? 

ROMANS. 

Romans associated snakes with healing and rebirth - clinics sometimes had lil snakes crawling around on the ground to give the place good vibes. 

You cannot tell me that Crowley could have existed in Rome for any length of time and not picked up some of this jewelry. Which leads me to my conclusion:

IV - CROWLEY IS EXTREMELY NEW IN TOWN

The unfashionable pin and hair? The clothing draped the wrong way? The cultural colorblindness of wearing a laurel crown when you’re not supposed to? Crowley looks like a tacky tourist because he is one. He’s not staying here long, he “just nipped in for a quick temptation.”

He’s in a bad mod because he’s had an awful day, everyone keeps looking at him funny, the temptation was a complete bust, he has culture shock, and now he’s just trying to get a drink. But they don’t have any PROPER drinks like ALE or MEAD here, so he just orders “whatever’s drinkable.” He’s even not sure what they drink in Rome. 

Edit: here is Part 2A of Good Omens Human AU’s and Part 2B

I am so excited for this Good Omens Celebration week of Fandom! I have loved all the fan content created for Good Omens. Thank you so much to all the creators out there who bring us so much joy! Here are some of my favorites:

So, to start off, I run a weekly fic and artist rec series that can be found here: 

Dannye’s fic recs   Dannye’s artist recs

ALSO @prolix-principality runs an ongoing series of GO fic recs, so definitely check them out!

And special for this week, a list of some wonderful completed GO Human AU’s: Please feel free to reblog and add your own! 

Series: (not all of these series are complete but the fics in them are finished)

An Album of Our Life series by @satincolt , Rated G (C & A are professors)

Big Plans and Little Additions series by @hope-inthedark , Rated T (Astronomy professor C and bookshop owner A)

Coffee, Wine, and Textbooks-Verse by shaniacbergara, Rated E (C & A are professors)

Corporate romance series by @stubbornjerk (Ao3 stubborn_jerk) Rated T (Lawyer C and security guard A work for rival companies)

Demon and Angel Professors by Ghostinthehouse, Rated T (C & A are professors)

Ineffable Husbands Oneshots series by EmeraldAshes, Rated T (series contains some human AUs. Part 2: C is a client at A’s office; Part 3: C buys a flat haunted by A’s ghost; Parts 6 & 8: C & A are officemates; Part 9: A runs into the Bentley with his car)

Ineffable Teens (Good Omens) series by @sedehaven (Ao3 gypsyweaver) Rated T (C & A - plus Dagon, Gabriel, Michael, and Beelzebub - are high school students with summer jobs at the mall)

Interdepartmental Cooperation series by @bestoftheseekwill (Ao3 Seekwill) Rated E (C & A - and Beelzebub and Gabriel- are professors)

Our touching, our stories ; earthy and holy both by @mortuarybees (Ao3 deadgreeks) (This is a series of nonsequential ficlets in one work; in the earliest part of the stories, C & A are college students) 

Recovering series by @summerofspock Rated E (C & A are doctors)

Soft Comforts Series by @servantofmischief​, Rated G (Artist A draws an anonymous portrait of C in a coffee shop)

So Long We Become the Flowers series by @allonsy-gabriel (Ao3 allonsy_gabriel) Rated G (flower shop owner C and antiques/bookshop owner A) 

Sweet Series by @shay-moonsilk (Ao3: Shay_Moonsilk) Rated E (Lawyer C and cam worker A) 

Tailored Temptations series by CruelBeauty Rated E (Actor C and costume designer A)

The Blind Date AU series by @mygalfriday Rated T (Nightclub owner C and museum worker A)

Their Affections series by @servantofmischief, Rated M (Lord Crowley and Lady Aziraphale in the Regency era)

Til We Loved series by @cardinaldaughter (Ao3: Cardinal_Daughter) Rated E (Victorian age with military officer C and aristocrat A)

Single Fics: 

A bookshop is not a business by @itsevidentvery (Ao3 anactoriatalksback) 5070 words, Rated G (C is a customer at A’s bookshop)

Acts of Service by @bestoftheseekwill (Ao3: Seekwill) 51968 words, Rated E (Mysterious man C - no spoilers!- and vicar A)

A Different Kind of Arrangement by mar_map; 19393 words, Rated G (Flower shop owner C and bookshop owner A)

Against Better Judgement by @weatheredlaw; 6443 words, Rated E (Aristocrat C and bookbinder A)

All’s Fair In Love And Serial Killing by @wyvernquill, 10216 words, Rated M (Detective Inspector C and possible serial killer A in a dark comedy)

An Absence of Stars by @mllekurtz (Ao3 TheKnittingJedi) 56426 words, Rated E (C is an author with a secret and A owns a bookshop)

Angel by @holycatsandrabbits (Dannye Chase) Self-rec! 10841 words, Rated E (Flower shop owner C and nurse A)

Anthophilia by @fortinbrasftw; 49446 words, Rated E (Flower shop owner C and neighboring bookshop owner A)

In no particular order, here’s a (nowhere near exhaustive) list of fics that kept me alive while I struggled through the horrors of my final exams.

Hozier Missed A Trick When He Called It ‘Real People’ Instead Of ‘Joe Bloggs Snogs’ (E) by indieninja92 @indieninja92 - Crowley and Aziraphale having a wonderfully hilarious conversation about what they would be like if they were human. The banter is off the charts. I live for sneaky references to The Secret Garden. I’ve read this one five times the past two days alone and every time I read it something else jumps out at me and makes me laugh. Absolutely gorgeous.

Storms We Cannot Weather (G) by quiltedspacemittens @theseedsofdoom - Crowley anxiously waiting for a storm to hit the South Downs cottage. YOU GUYS. Holy crap, this fic shook me to the core in just a little over a thousand words. Beautiful, beautiful imagery and language. Left me devastated in the best way possible. 

Comfort and Joy (M) by musegnome @musegnome - This fic!!! It’s a human AU where Aziraphale and Crowley are classmates. I yelled about it for a year and a day. So many incredibly soft moments that made me smile so wide. It may interest you to know that I am, in fact, the Grinch, but this is a Christmas fic that I would read at any time of year.

The Saint of Lost Things (E) by jessthereckless - Look, I love rare pairs. I love them even more when I’ve never thought about them before and then I read a fic that makes me go, oh. Anyway. Here’s a fic that utilizes the Crowley/Leonardo da Vinci pairing in a way that shattered my entire being. This pair is going to live in my mind rent-free forever. 

Circumstances of Distinction (M) by MrsCaulfield - Idk sometimes you just want to read a fluffy Regency fic with zero homophobia!! Glorious footnotes that both cracked me up and taught me quite a bit of historical detail too. I was absolutely sucked into this fic. Highly recommend this for Austen fans.

The Curve of Old Bones (E) by jenanigans1207 @jenanigans1207 - What do you mean, you aren’t reading this fic yet? Here’s a wonderfully written human AU where Aziraphale and Crowley end up pretending to be married for the sake of Crowley’s job. The pining is *chef’s kiss*, the banter is hilarious, and the angst is DELICIOUS. A whole rollercoaster of the best emotions imaginable.

It’s Never Quite As It Seems (T) by ZehWulf @zehwulf - Crowley walks Aziraphale through the mechanics of sleep. Omg, this fic. I read it and lay down and stared at the ceiling for a while and thought about love and repression and the inherent softness of sleep. A tag I loved: “fellas is it gay to make your hereditary enemy a bespoke bed?” 

Folks let me talk about Crowley and sunglasses, because I have a lot of emotions about when he wears them and when he doesn’t, and Hiding versus Being Seen.

We’re introduced to the concept of Crowley wearing glasses even before we’re introduced to Crowley, by Hastur: “If you ask me he’s been up here too long. Gone native. Enjoying himself too much. Wearing sunglasses even when he doesn’t need them.”

Honestly Crowley’s whole introduction is a fantastic; we learn so much about his character in a tiny amount of time. The fact that he’s late, the Queen playing as the Bentley approaches, the “Hi, guys” in response to Hastur and Ligur’s “Hail Satan”. I like this intro much better than the one originally scripted with the rats at the phone company, but I digress.

Crowley wears sunglasses when he doesn’t need them. Specifically, he still wears them around the demons, and when he’s in hell.

You know where Crowley doesn’t wear glasses? At home.

We never once see him wearing glasses in his flat, except for when he knows Hastur and Ligur are coming. That’s an emotional kick to the gut for me. Here’s one of the only places Crowley’s comfortable enough to be sans glasses, and when he knows it’s going to be invaded he prepares not just physically with the holy water, but by putting up that emotional barrier in a place where he wasn’t supposed to need it.

An argument could be made that Crowley actually never needs glasses. We’re shown that it’s well within the angels’ and demons’ powers to pass unnoticed by humans. Crowley and Aziraphale waltz out of the manor in the middle of a police raid, and going unnoticed by the police takes so little effort that they can keep up a conversation while they stroll through. Even an unimaginative demon like Hastur apparently doesn’t have trouble with the humans losing it over his demonic eyes. The humans in the scene at Megiddo are acting like “this guy is a little weird” and not “holy shit his entire eyeballs are black jelly”

That means that Crowley’s glasses are a choice, just like Aziraphale’s softness. Sure, he could arrange matters so that nobody ever noticed his eyes, but he doesn’t want to. Crowley wants acceptance, and he wants to belong, and he’s never, ever had that. He didn’t fit in before the Fall in Heaven, he doesn’t fit in with the demons in Hell. With the glasses, and with the Bentley and his plants and with the barely-bad-enough-to-be-evil nuisance temptations, he’s choosing Earth. This is where he wants to fit in, perhaps not with the humans, but amongst them.

Even after Crowley is at his absolute lowest, when he thinks Aziraphale’s dead and he’s on his way to drink until the world ends, he takes the time to put a new pair on when the old ones are damaged. He needs that emotional crutch right now, even with everything about to turn into a pile of puddling goo he’s not ready for the world to see his eyes.

Which is why I swore out loud when Hastur forcibly takes them off.

It’s about the worst thing that Hastur could have done. Rather than leading with a physical threat, his first act is to strip away Crowley’s emotional defences. It’s a great writing choice because god it made me hate Hastur, even more than all the physical violence we see him do.

It’s also the moment that Crowley really truly gets his shit together, and focuses all of his considerable imagination on getting to Tadfield and Aziraphale to help save the world. He’s wielding the terrifyingly unimaginable power of someone who’s hit rock bottom and realised it literally could not get any worse than this. He doesn’t put another pair of glasses on after discorporating Hastur, and he spends the majority of the airbase sequence without them.

He puts them back on again, I think, at the moment that he really lets himself hope. When he thinks ‘shit, there may be a real chance that we get through this to a future that I don’t want to lose’.

The vulnerability is back, and he needs Adam to trust him. In Crowley’s mind being accepted by a human means he needs to have his eyes hidden. Someone give the demon a hug, please.

Interestingly, there’s only one time in the whole series that we see Crowley willingly choose to take his glasses off around another person. Only one person he’ll take down that barrier for, and even then he’s drunk before he does it.

Dear God/Satan/Someone that makes my heart ache. Crowley’s chosen Earth, but he’s also chosen Aziraphale. He’s been looking for somewhere to belong his entire existence, and it’s with the angel that he finally feels it.

When the dust settles and the world is saved and they finally have space to be themselves unguarded, I like to imagine Crowley takes off the glasses when it’s just the two of them; the idea of being known doesn’t scare him quite so much anymore.