Eumelia

CRUSHING NOT THE BODIES OF HIS OPPONENTS, BUT THEIR VERY MINDS AND SPIRITS.

LIMITED NOT BY THE REACH OF A SWORD, HIS CONQUESTS AND VICTORIES SPAN THE UNIVERSE.

crowley:

in the book, when aziraphale suffocates the dove at warlock’s party, it’s CROWLEY who takes it from him and resurrects it (i’m forever bitter they changed it bc it’s so understated but such a lovely character moment)

there’s not a lot of physical description of the characters but we know that crowley is young, has dark hair and good cheekbones, wears snakeskin boots that may or may not be his feet, and can “do really weird things with his tongue” 👀👀

also when he gets annoyed/stressed, he starts to hiss

when he’s in his flat freaking out about the impending apocalypse, he tries to calm himself down by alphabetising his collection of soul music. yes really

he didn’t take credit for the spanish inquisition. in fact, he’d never even heard of the spanish inquisition until the commendation arrived, at which point he went to check it out and was so horrified by what he saw that he fucked off to the nearest cantina and got drunk for a week

is an absolute little bitch of epic proportions. like in the show a lot of his lines are delivered all cool and sassy but in the book he’s literally just bitching about everything all the time. with the paintball bit, when aziraphale says he knew crowley was always secretly nice, he doesn’t flip out and push aziraphale against a wall, he just bitches some more, because he bitches all!!! the!!! time!!! “oh lord heal this bike”? bitching. the only times he’s not bitching is when he’s throwing a temper tantrum or gleefully pranking people

“nothing but dust and fundamentalists”

he slept through almost the entire 19th century because it was so boring, except for 1832 when he got up to go to the toilet

‘… Bee-elzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me… “For me,” murmured Crowley. His expression went blank for a moment. Then he gave a strangled scream and wrenched the on-off knob.’ ;a; my poor son i just wanna protect him

back in the day, the most popular fancast for him was benedict cumberbatch. this was exactly as awful as it sounds

the reason there were so many queen songs in the show is bc there’s this whole bit in the book about how any cassette that gets left in a car for longer than two weeks morphs into a best of queen album. crowley had a bunch of eclectic tapes (he likes velvet underground, joy division, and handel) in his car but they turned into queen. and at the end of the book?  ‘Crowley inserted a cassette labled “Handel’s Water Music”, and it stayed “Handel’s Water Music” all the way home.’ MY HEART

his CANONICAL NUMBER ONE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION AS WRITTEN BY PTERRY AND GAIMAN is to accept that superglueing valuable coins to the sidewalk then watching events unfold from a nearby cafe is not proper demonic activity

aziraphale:

his hands are apparently plump and very well manicured

wears a camelhair coat. fandom has also collectively decided he wears argyle sweaters even though this is never once mentioned in canon

upon meeting aziraphale, most people get three impressions: 1) that he is british 2) that he is intelligent 3) that he is gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. he’s not british and angels are technically sexless unless they really want to make an effort… but he is intelligent

at the start of the book, he hasn’t sworn for six thousand years. the first time he swears in six thousand years is “bugger”. the second time is “oh fuck” when he gets shadwell’d

after he gets shadwell’d he doesn’t immediately possess madame tracy. instead he bodyhops across the world and at one point possesses an american televangelist on live tv and proceeds to deliver an amazing smackdown of the commercialisation of religion then ends with “gosh. am i on television?” i love him

HE’S the one to suggest killing adam. mr stuffy angel’s NUMBER ONE IDEA for dealing with the problem is to MURDER AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD BOY

his bookshop is actually just a place for him to store his collection of rare books (including a collection of bibles that have misprints like the wicked bible and the standing fishes bible). he doesn’t actually want anyone to buy them. so he opens at weird hours, makes his shop constantly smell bad, and gives people death stares whenever they step inside to make them leave as quickly as possible.

also mobsters keep threatening his shop to try to make him leave. he thanks them politely, shows them out the door, and they are never seen again.

he does his taxes on an ancient mac, which is the only technology he’s ever adopted, and they’re so scrupulously accurate he’s been investigated five times because the government’s sure he’s getting away with murder somewhere

along with benedict cumberbatch as crowley people used to fancast him as martin freeman. 2013 was a dark time.

absolute asshole. complete stinky bastard man. he’s SO CRUEL to crowley it’s unreal, and he doesn’t even realise half the time. when he admits at the end before the showdown with satan that “i’ll have always known, deep down inside, that there was some good in you”. not there was some good deep down inside crowley. that DEEP DOWN INSIDE AZIRAPHALE was the knowledge that crowley had some good in him. my heart!!!!!!!!!

miscellany:

back in my day we didn’t have any of this fancy ineffable husbands shit. we called it air conditioning and we liked it

read @irisbleufic‘s crown of thorns verse. its the ultimate go fic

IT’S CANON ACTUAL CANON that after the book crowley and aziraphale moved into a cottage in the south downs together so uhhh yeah They’re Gay Karen

Dancing demons are described as ‘moving like a white band on Soul Train.’

Both Aziraphale and Crowley are absolutely fleeced by Shadwell because they couldn’t be bothered to actually look at the names of the ‘soldiers’ that worked (or didn’t) under Shadwell. This results in Crowley having to listen to Madame Tracey babble about her day.

Because he uses the original WFA pay scale, this fleecing actually only amounts to about sixty pounds a year.

Crowley has to have two phone lines, because one of them is forever being called by telemarketers.

Even though he probably has no idea how to use it, Crowley updates his incredibly stupid computer every few months, because that’s what Cool Guys do, and Crowley really wants to look Cool.

Aziraphale blows up a traffic warden’s ticket book, and it amazes Crowley so much it makes the angel blush.

Aziraphale does NOT like being cold.

The Bentley is entirely capable of driving itself.

Crowley has only ever filled the tank up once, and that was because he’s such a GIANT FUCKING DORK that he wanted to get the James Bond bullet decal stickers to put in the back window. 

Aziraphale created Shropshire.

Aziraphale isn’t a technophobe, or living 150 years in the past. One of the ways Crowley woos him into his plan is by pointing out that Heaven doesn’t have CDs or daily crosswords, or movie theaters.

Crowley evidently plays arcade games.

Az has actually been running his bookshop since at least the 1650s.

He seems to conveniently forget that he swears while drinking. He refers to the Kraken as a Great Big Bugger. He loses all of his posh primness when drunk, and becomes an argumentative little shit.

The entire bit with the little bird and the end of the universe. That scene is gold.

“Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped,” said Crowley. He shrugged. “Anyway, why’re we talking about this good and evil? They’re just names for sides. We know that.” I love this line so much.

Aziraphale’s idea of banishing demons is to just strongly hint that he has work to do and that it had gotten late. Crowley always got the hint.

Some may know that one of the issues SAG is fighting is that studios want to take virtual scans of background actors and use them in perpetuity (meaning forever) without any additional compensation to those background actors. So you would just see a bunch of AI generated humans in future movies based off of a background actor that worked one day.

This is already shitty because working as an extra for 3 days on a union set (if you receive a union voucher each day) is one of the main ways to qualify for SAG eligibility. This means that a lot of actors working background do not yet have union protection and likely do not have an agent or manager to protect them. Disney has already allegedly told background actors to do this on the set of Wanda Vision: https://www.avclub.com/wandavision-background-actors-say-disney-scanned-them-1850709900

Here’s where it's worse.

There is one main company that supplies background actors for major union and non union productions. Central Casting. They love to brag about their very long influence in the industry - in old movies dating back to the 40s you can hear jokes about hiring extras from Central Casting.

Central Casting has been including an electronic document for all actors in their database to sign as part of onboarding. Signing it gives Central Casting the right to use your images, your videos, and YOUR LIKENESS in perpetuity, forever. They would OWN your likeness. Instead of it being a studio supplying the AI background actors, it would be Central Casting instead.

Receiving any work from Central Casting in the future is conditional upon signing it. No signature = no extra work = no extra income for union actors trying to make health insurance minimums, no union extra work for pre-SAG members.

SAG already reached out to Central Casting to tell them to stop. Central Casting refused.

Edit to say: this is not new. It’s part of actors onboarding and is called the Photo, Image, and Video Release. It’s phrased to sound like you are just giving them permission to use your image and video for CC’s website and promotional purposes. But the actual language is much broader. It's only recently being brought up as a point for discussion because some casting directors (who are generally supportive of the strike) started pointing it out.

Rational Brain: "Most ghost phenomena is explained by infrasound and carbon monoxide leaks"

To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995)

If you’re younger, you may not know Patrick Swayze; he was Taken From Us in 2009. But Patrick Swayze was an icon of masculinity. Men were willing to watch romantic movies because Patrick Swayze was in them.

Patrick Swayze was fucking beefcake.

And this man didn’t just agree to do a movie where the only time he’s not actually in drag is the first three minutes, which involve stepping out of the shower, doing make up, and getting Dressed. He has ONE LINE that is delivered in a man’s voice, and it’s not during those three minutes.

And if you watch those three minutes, you see a stark difference between his portrayal of Miss Vida Bohéme and Wesley Snipes as Noxeema Jackson. (I am not criticizing Snipes’ performance. They were different roles.) Noxeema was a comedy character. Chi-Chi was a comedy character. But Miss Vida Bohéme was a dramatic role, played by a dramatic powerhouse.

When Vida sits down in front of the mirror, she sees a man. And she doesn’t like it.

Then she puts her hair up, and her face lights up.

“Ready or not,” she says. “Here comes Mama.”

And while Noxeema is having fun with her transformation (at one point breaking into a giggling fit after putting on pantyhose), Vida is simply taking pleasure in bringing out her true self. And when she’s done, she sees this:

And you can FEEL her pride.

“I grew up in the ‘70s and even within the street culture, there was a lot of flamboyancy,” Snipes told TODAY of his perception of drag before filming. “Pimps wore the same furs as theprostitutes wore.

“Some of the great musicians of the world, like Parliament-Funkadelic, were very androgynous. So it wasn’t really new for me to see men dressed as women or men dressed as drag queens.”

Snipes attended the famed LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts and then State University of New York at Purchase. He wasn’t a dance major, but most of his friends were. “That exposed me to the world of glam, vogue, drag, transgender and gay people, LGBTQ… but it wasn’t in fashion those days. But it existed and I was around it.”

Not only did “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” pave the way for “To Wong Foo,” so did films like the 1968 documentary “The Queen” and “Paris Is Burning,” the 1990 doc that chronicled ball culture of New York and the various Black and queer communities involved in it.

Even though he was known for his action roles, Snipes’ portrayal of Noxeema wasn’t the first time he played a drag queen. In 1986, he made his Broadway debut in the play “Execution of Justice,” playing Sister Boom Boom, a real-life AIDS activist and drag nun who acted as the show’s voice of conscience. Snipes pointed out, “Sister Boom Boom did not have Noxeema’s makeup kit.”

On whether he got any pushback for stepping into Noxeema’s pumps, he said, “Not so much professionally but the streets weren’t feeling it, and there were certain community circles. The martial arts community… they were not feeling it at all.”

“In fact, when the movie came out and they would come down the street, I would see them in Brooklyn sometimes, they started listing all my movies. I noticed they would always skip that one. I would correct them, ‘Now you don’t got the full count!’”

Lesser-known than his co-stars at the time, Lequizamo didn’t really anticipate becoming a transgender icon, but he did know that they were working on something special when they started filming.

“Drag didn’t really exist in movies,” Lequizamo, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal, told TODAY. “There were straight men pretending to be women to get out of trouble or into trouble but this was not that. I was trying to make Chi-Chi a real life trans character and Patty and Wesley were trying to be real drag queens.” Never fully articulated in the film, Chi-Chi Rodriguez has always been perceived as transgender, something that ending up making an indelible mark on LGBTQ people in the late ‘90s as trans representation in media was limited.

“Chi-Chi was a trans icon, but she also showed us that gay men and trans women can both perform and work in drag side by side, and that those relationships are symbiotic,” Cayne explained.

“It was a powerful thing. I get lots of fan mail from LGBTQ teens telling me how my character helped them come out to their parents,” Leguizamo said. “They didn’t feel like they were seen, so that was a beautiful gift from the movie.”

Lequizamo also articulates that if “To Wong Foo” were cast today, a trans actor should be cast in his role. (And that just may happen, since Beane is developing a musical for Broadway.) “Anybody can play anything, but the playing field is not fair that way,” he said. “Not everybody is allowed to play everything. So until we get to that place, it is important for trans actors to get a chance to act which they don’t. In the project I’m doing, I’m making sure that the person playing trans is a trans person so we can make it legit, make it real. That just needs to be done right now.”