How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin

Crowley sets it all up. He thinks it's cute. He starts growing berries and herbs in his garden.

Aziraphale starts out with like three viewers per video. He's so proud. Crowley is, too.

Then he just kinda blows up. Crowley is a bit more internet savvy. He finds out Aziraphale is referred to as a cute, happy grandpa teaching people to cook. People like how positive he is about cooking and food in general. Young people who seem to be on their own for the first time are genuinely grateful for his tutorials and advice.

Aziraphale starts answering questions--can fresh be substituted for frozen, can lemon juice replace lemon, how long has he been cooking--and Crowley has a good idea to have do a little livestream while baking one day. People ask questions in the comments as he talks to them as if they're really there. He misses most of them as he's so distracted. Crowley watches from the side, avoiding being in frame.

Then someone asks how he grows his own ingredients. He beams and drops everything.

"My dear husband is a wonderful gardener!"

Crowley blushes. The comments go wild. Aziraphale grabs him by the arm and pulls him in front of the camera.

"This is my husband... Anthony."

Crowley ducks his head, face burning. He tries leaving. Aziraphale has a hard hold while he gushes for five minutes about how amazing Crowley is, how wonderful he is for growing fresh ingredients for his little hobby, and "no matter what he says he is a very nice man." Crowley hisses quietly.

Aziraphale lets him go. Crowley shuffles back to his place at the table.

"Where were we--ah!"

By the end of the night Aziraphale is happily finishing his dish and chatting away, occasionally turning to Crowley to make a small comment or acknowledge him when the questions about their relationship come flooding in. He's radiating love by that point and, still streaming, spins towards Crowley.

"What do you say to a few more godchildren, dear?"

Crowley begins appearing in videos after the livestream. Aziraphale will pull him into frame and hold out a spoonful of his latest dish for Crowley to taste. The viewers love it, Aziraphale says, and he knows Crowley does, too

Aziraphale becomes known as an LGBT icon. Comments become an equal mix of people discussing the recipes and expressing their love of seeing such a healthy queer relationship

Because the comments start becoming personal as Aziraphale's audience becomes majorly young LGBT people, he begins peppering in life advice to the best of his ability. He says that he understands what's it like to not be accepted and to go against what he's been told is God's plan, but now he has Crowley and a little cottage and his joy now is indescribable

I know, it’s a subtle distinction. I’m going to use dolls as an example, because Special Interest Hell. Bear with me for a second. 

A while back, Mattel made a doll line called Ever After High. Ever After High had a gimmick- it was a doll line based on fairy tales, but instead of being based directly on the fairy tale characters themselves, it was based on their children. This meant that they could create iconic and memorable designs for the characters without being accused of ripping off Disney’s designs.  

This is an original “basic” Ever After High doll: 

The dolls are almost fully articulated- they have 360 degree head rotation, articulated shoulders, elbows, wrists, and knees. Their costume designs are complicated, often featuring multiple layers of fabric and lots of accessories. Each doll came with a stand, a hairbrush, and a bookmark that told their “story”. They retailed for $16.99. 

The dolls came in two factions: “Royals” (the children of heroes) and “Rebels” (the children of villains). Each one had a backstory and a motivation, and they had an accompanying webseries that told those stories. 

(I swear there’s a reason I’m going into Excruciating Detail.)

Even though I didn’t like the sculpts… Ever After High was a pretty good doll line, and it was moderately successful. It brought in 53 million dollars- not nearly as much as Barbie, but still a decent profit.

… Disney didn’t sue Mattel for this. Copyright never got involved. But they didn’t need to sue. They did two things that killed Ever After High dead. 

The first was that they took the license for the Disney Princesses away from Mattel and gave it to Hasbro. Since that’s, obviously, a big money-making license, that was a pretty nasty punishment. 

But the other thing Disney did, the thing that I think was what properly killed Ever After High… they massively expanded the merchandising for Disney Descendants. 

…Now, it looks like Disney Descendants was already in the works when Ever After High started coming out. I don’t think Disney got so OMGSCARED of Ever After High that they made a product directly to compete with it. And I can’t say anything bad about the movies because a) I haven’t seen them and b) I think @bpd-dylan-hall will kill me. 

But the two franchises share some notable similarities- they’re about the teenage children of fairy tale characters, who are split into two factions: “hero” and “villain”. They’re very ‘modern’, with colorful hair and flashy, iconic designs.  

This is a basic Disney Descendants doll: 

I own both Ever After High and Descendants dolls, and I gotta say: the Descendants are way lower quality. They’ve got almost no articulation- just wrists, hips, and knees. They don’t come with a stand or many accessories. Their costumes are much simpler, and most of the designs are screen-printed on. They’re not crap dolls, don’t get me wrong, and I like their sculpts more than EAH- but by comparison, they’re not very good. 

But that made one important difference: The Disney Descendants basic doll retailed at $12.99. 

Now, riddle me this: if you’re the parent of an eight-year-old girl who loves dolls, which are you more likely to get: the high-quality expensive doll with a lot of small parts she’s likely to lose, or the cheaper one with a brand name on it that you recognize? 

Disney was able to massively undercut the competition. Mattel couldn’t keep up. They made cheaper versions of the Ever After High dolls -they went for $9.99 or so, they’re absolute garbage, and collectors and kids both hated them. 

Mattel hasn’t officially canceled Ever After High. But the show’s not coming out anymore, the dolls aren’t on shelves anymore, and we haven’t heard anything about either since 2017. Disney won, and they won hard. 

If Disney didn’t have the kind of money they do, if Disney didn’t have the kind of clout they do, this wouldn’t have happened. I mean, sure, all doll lines end eventually, that’s the way of the world, but Disney deliberately undercut the competition. Depending on how much dolls cost to make and ship, they might even have been making them at a loss.

But Disney could afford to do it because they’re Disney.

The only time anyone’s ever really been able to successfully make a fairy tale franchise without getting shot down by Disney was Shrek, and that’s because Disney didn’t want to touch the aeShrektic with a ten-foot pole. They were scared they’d ruin their image. Any other time anyone does anything with fairy tales (or princesses, or talking cars, or talking fish, or pirates, or…)  Disney can make their own version and sell it at a loss, driving their competitors out of business. They have more money than God. They can afford to lose money on one theme park, let alone one toyline or one movie.

OH AND

someone was asking about styles! as far as other styles go, it comes in triceratops and stegosaurus. 

are these bags large? no

me: 

Disney: “We’re going to take all our movies off of streaming sites INCLUDING THE ONE WE ALREADY OWN (Hulu) so we can put them on a separate one and milk even more money out of you.”

Me:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/state-department-to-lgbt-married-couples-your-out-of-wedlock-kids-arent-citizens