Frieren EP 25 - Serie & Flamme

Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong and I hate it

Couple years ago I saw these two board games at the store back to back. Well, not saw them per se, but ya know. Spied them out of the corner of my eye. And for a moment without reading the text, I couldn’t tell you which was which decade at first. Funny. Either they were in a rush to get these out the door or they wanted their throwback trivia game boxes to look uniform. I didn’t think too much of it.

Only, from then on I started seeing it MORE. Every time someone markets a 90s or 80s throwback…

Goddammit they’re identical! What??! How did we let this happen? As a 90s survivor and a designer, this drives me up a wall.

Look, I know I’m late to the party to complain about “the 90s look” when we’re just starting to get sick of the Y2K nostalgia train. But c’mon, the 90s were not The 80s: Part Two™ 

Trust me when I say that we weren’t all wearing neon trapezoids up until the year 2000. The 90s look being peddled is so specific to the tail end of the 80s and an early early part of the 90s - a part of the 90s when it wouldn’t stop being the 80s. This is Memphis design being conflated with the wrong decade.

Keep reading for a long ass graphic design history lesson and pictures of old soda and fast food.

Keep reading

cw: some DEAD DOVE content ahead!!

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I wrote an unapologetic dead dove fic inspired by an equally unapologetic dead dove artwork by the brilliant @aivelin ~ both available @ 🎃👻GO Halloween FanZine👻🎃

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🚨 the zine has all manners of spooky works, some horny, some soft and you can find previews for all 14 creators HERE❗❗❗

stede: 😌💅🏻 izzy: 👁👄👁

The whole cast of OFMD: “you thought we were hot in season 1? We’ll get even hotter in season 2!”

And by god they did!

Damn!

why is your first mate so small and angry and in need of love, if he's not supposed to be picked up and cuddled??? why is he your unicorn if you're not going to gently drag him into your relationship and smooch him all over??? All feat. izzy's ass because it's important to me, personally <3

Crowley: let’s run off into the sunset together uwu

Aziraphale: but how can i protecc u if we haven’t dismantled the oppressive hierarchical system yet, u silly

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH 2.02 | 2.03

Every day I wake up and think:

“At some point Izzy realised how out of control things had gotten, and started putting himself in between Ed and the crew, as much as he could. Especially when Ed was too drunk/high to even know what he was doing. Cause Izzy doesn’t want the others to suffer more for his mistakes.”

“They are all bonded through shared trauma now.”

And every day I cry like a baby.

So, this response really got me thinking again and turning around some different gears in my head. Crowley's fall started with their meeting. That's huge!

This means Aziraphale caused Crowley to fall, at least indirectly and Aziraphale knows it.

I do quickly want to say that I feel it's likely Crowley would have fallen anyway, that it would have happened because of his nature and his curiosity and his questioning, but Aziraphale must remember that first meeting and blame himself for the eventual outcome. Here was this wonderful, joyful angel out there making nebulas and Aziraphale talked to him for like five minutes and he fell.

Because of Aziraphale.

It also recontextualizes some of Aziraphale's other actions if you think about the Guilt that Aziraphale must have been feeling. He's clearly smitten with Crowley when they first meet while Crowley's an angel, but on the wall at Eden, he's definitely more uncomfortable and his gazes aren't the longing looks from pre-creation. He recognizes Crowley as that angel, he feels guilty about it, far more than he does about giving away the flaming sword. And then when it starts to rain, he protects Crowley because it's the least he can do after what he did to ruin Crowley's life.

I'm betting he felt that same guilt very heavily when Crowley asks him for the Holy Water initially. He's afraid that Hell is so bad that Crowley would destroy himself to escape it. And though Aziraphale has clearly pushed his guilt mostly to the back of his mind, it has to be there in the forefront at that moment.

He's thinking "Crowley is suffering so much he'd rather be destroyed". He's remembering that beautiful, innocent angel Crowley was and how his laughter lit up the stars themselves and now Crowley asks him for the ability to end his existence. No wonder Aziraphale is so reluctant! If Crowley uses the Holy Water on himself, it means Aziraphale will be responsible for Crowley being completely destroyed. He only caves on the matter when he realizes Crowley will do it without his help and realizes he can't make Crowley suffer more to get it, not after everything he's already done to the demon so far.

I've always wondered why Aziraphale seems afraid of Crowley loving him. He's always seemed comfortable in the knowledge that he loves Crowley, but when Crowley tries to confess to him in the S2 finale, he looks terrified. He looks like he's about to have an anxiety attack.

It's not because he doesn't want to be loved by Crowley. He wants that more than anything. It's because this is the /wrong time/. But it was - in Aziraphale's head - so close to being the right time. In Aziraphale's mind, he was so close to finally making up for this horrible thing he did to Crowley, that he could finally accept Crowley's love without this looming over him. It's not just about making Heaven worthy of Crowley, it's about making HIMSELF worthy of Crowley's love.

What Aziraphale doesn't realize is that Crowley has never blamed him. Never. He's just projecting his own guilt and then using it to bludgeon himself into thinking he's not good enough for Crowley. Aziraphale values Crowley more than he values himself, just like he trusts Crowley more than he trusts himself.

It makes me think a bit more on the concept of Grace in Catholicism, how sins must be cleansed to allow the Grace to flow through and fill the body. When you believe that you must be cleansed of sin to accept Grace, it's an easy jump to feel that you cannot also be worthy of love if you have not absolved yourself of sin. But in Aziraphale's mind, there is no way to fix what he did to Crowley. Until there is.

No wonder Aziraphale reacts so excitedly - and so desperately - to the thought of reinstating Crowley as an angel. Yes, he knows Crowley is more than worthy of being an angel, that he never SHOULD have fallen to begin with. But with this added context it's even worse… he blames himself for Crowley falling. Crowley was so happy as an angel and Aziraphale took that away from him. He sees reinstating Crowley both as the Right Thing to Do in a moral sense, but also as a way to finally absolve himself of this guilt he's undoubtedly carried since Crowley Fell.

Aziraphale is so blinded by his guilt and his need to absolve himself and make it right for Crowley that he completely fails to realize both that Crowley doesn't want what he's offering, but he also fails to realize that Crowley doesn't even blame him for the terrible thing he thinks he did. Crowley already loves him without condition.

Trying to make Crowley an angel again is the most tragically selfish, self-centered things Aziraphale has ever done and even then it comes from a trauma he's been carrying since before the Beginning.

He keeps forgiving Crowley for things that don't need forgiveness, but what Aziraphale really needs - for both of their sakes - is to finally forgive himself.

Becoming Real

Recently Good Omens Prime Twitter account posted a BTS photo of Aziraphale and Furfur and it started the gears in my head turning, trying to parse it. It's only just now that it finally coalesced into a proper thought.

I kept thinking Aziraphale reminded me of something, especially when compared to the other angels. Look at him next to pre-Jim Gabriel, Uriel, Michael... heck, even Furfur, who he's standing next to right now.

Furfur is a demon, but his outfit is impeccable, it's sleek and stylish. The angel's suits in heaven are all pressed and flawless and New.

But not Aziraphale. He's dressed in old human clothes, his waistcoat is worn and tattered and long-loved. Aziraphale is, as Michael put it, like an old sofa. Worn and comfortable. He could choose to look basically however he wants, but instead he chooses to clothe himself in actual human clothes, to eat human food, to enjoy human entertainment - books, music, plays, etc. He does this despite the fact that it actively makes the other angels dislike him and find him unpalatable.

And that's what stuck out to me. Because unlike those other angels and demons, Aziraphale doesn't feel distant from humanity. He might be odd or eccentric to humans, but they don't question his humanity. He doesn't stand out to them in the way that the other angels do when they show up.

It occurred to me that this is because unlike the other angels... Aziraphale is Real.

Have you ever read The Velveteen Rabbit? There's a scene in it where they talk about what it means to be Real:

This made me think of Aziraphale. About how the other angels are these pristine things, kept aloof from the world, and then there's Aziraphale, who is worn and shabby, who's lived on earth for millennia among the humans. He's loved and learned and experienced what being human is like and because of that he's Real in a way that the other angels aren't. Humans have personhood, a sense of agency, a sense of self. Angels and demons have only the divine plan, as Beelzebub and Gabriel noted, that's all they live for "if you can call it living".

But what strikes me the most is how potentially devastating Aziraphale's Realness will be to Heaven. They only succeed at keeping angels in line because they're undistracted from the Great Plan. We see how Gabriel - as Jim - takes to cocoa after trying it. We see how quickly Muriel becomes fascinated with books.

Now consider that this is the angel they're putting in charge of Heaven. This worn, shabby, old sofa of an angel who has an endless well of love, for Crowley, for the world and the humans in it. He doesn't seem dangerous in the slightest. He seems Fragile.

But he is dangerous. So very dangerous.

But it's not because he's a guardian, not because he's a warrior, not because he's the Angel of the Eastern Gate who leads a battalion and was issued a flaming sword. He gave all of that away and it's worth noting that this is the first actual choice we see him make in the show, the thing that sets him apart in Crowley's eyes, and it wasn't even Crowley's doing! Aziraphale made a choice to give the mortals his sword out of compassion and it is a sense of compassion we don't see from the other angels.

His deviations all stem from that initial act. It takes him from being this two-dimensional cardboard entity existing only as part of the Divine Plan and set him on the path to actual Personhood.

It doesn't happen right away, of course, because as the Skin Horse says:

"It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But those things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

And doesn't that sum up Aziraphale? He's shabby and worn and he's beautiful to the people who understand and appreciate that being Real means being imperfect, and that every imperfection is still beautiful.

No wonder the angels mock his corporation, his flaws, all the things he enjoys that make him less than what they think he should be. We see evidence over and over that Aziraphale is essentially "ugly" to them. But that's because they don't understand.

Aziraphale's Realness, his personhood, what Crowley has helped nurture from the Wall of Eden all the way to that last desperate kiss, is what really matters. Good Omens has always been about People being fundamentally People. It's the underlying current that ties everything together, for good or for ill. People have agency. People have self-actualization. People have the ability to make their own choices, for good or for evil.

And now Aziraphale has that too.

That's the very real danger he presents to heaven.

Because we've already seen that any angel, given sufficient time and interaction with humans could be like Aziraphale. All it takes is one small opening, one bite from the apple. Whether deliberately or not, Crowley tempted Aziraphale into every step, the way he tempted Eve in the garden. He gave Aziraphale the knowledge of Right and Wrong, presented him with the option, the way he did with humanity. Were they even really human before Crowley? Did he give them free will? His actions cast them out of paradise, but did it ultimately set them free? Has he struggled for millennia to do the same for the angel he's loved so well and for so long?

Does Crowley know how horribly, wonderfully well he succeeded?

Bringing Aziraphale back to Heaven, putting him in charge, was the absolute worst thing the Metatron could have done for keeping the status quo and it's not because of Aziraphale's fighting prowess. It's because of the small Human acts of kindness and pettiness that Aziraphale is capable of. That's not going to go away when he's in Heaven. It's going to spread. He's going to infect Heaven with Humanity. It's going to be so slow and gradual that they won't see it coming until it's far too late.

It's not going to be the way that Aziraphale intends to change Heaven and yet, it will surely ultimately be what really makes a difference.

I wonder too, if maybe that's some subconscious part of it. After seeing Gabriel change, seeing Muriel change, I wonder if there's not some part of Aziraphale that realizes that Heaven is a miserable place that makes miserable people. He'll extend compassion to them that they don't deserve and don't know they're missing and he'll surely go on with whatever his own Plan - with a capital P, of course - is and he won't even realize what he's actually done.

And then, like the ending of S1, like the ending of S2, the ultimate deciding factor will not be who is the best warrior, who is the strongest. It will be about the Human element.

Metatron thought he could control Aziraphale, bring him in line by bringing him back to Heaven. He wants to take away the human element of Aziraphale and shove him back into that Obediently Little Angel shaped mold and he doesn't realize it's not possible anymore. Aziraphale's grown. He'll never fit, he'll never be that again. There is no going back anymore.

As the Skin Horse says: "Once you are Real, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

And Real things, things with depth and purpose and will, are impossible to ever truly control.

Of course I will.

One Piece 1.07 "The Girl with the Sawfish Tattoo"