I love when the music feels like it is hitting me with hammers
thought about Maddie for a second and wanted to hug someone. this woman had the worst first marriage possible with someone she once believed she loved and thought loved her back. she fought her way out of that and met her freedom. found a friend in the gentlest man, loved him and allowed him to love her in return, so much that she proposed marriage because it was worth celebrating. she had the most heartbreaking time as a child, swallowing her own grief and trying to makeup for her parents' grief to make sure her remaining brother would survive. would feel loved. then she had to stay away from him in the worst way possible, twice even, and chose to come back. chose to let him love her bigger than postcards, listen to her stories about the brother they both shared. her heartbreak in her parents became her distrust in herself and she had a beautiful baby girl who needed to be protected and cherished. of course she deserved only the good in life but what if Maddie wasn't seeing herself as good. fought an ocean, ran across states, all so she could find the good in her reflection again and hold her baby girl with the warmth that was always theirs. helped people as a nurse, watching lives saved and lost every day for years, and didn't want to be seen that way but she found newer ways to help. protected her team. protected herself. lost herself. found herself even more. there's a brilliance to her that holds the ship steady. there's a strength to her clarity to her that lowers the anchors to get off the grief's waves and walk home to hope. there's anger and joy and fatigue and beauty - all wrapped up in every day she chooses. and she's choosing to live. with it all, for it all, she chooses to live.
Allison Argent x Lydia Martin
Allison loves the way that Lydia looks at her. She even loves how every so often they are yanked out of bed by a scream and the two of them grab what's needed and go looking for a dead body.
Headcanons under the cut
Allison can't/doesn't drive and Lydia drives her everywhere
Allison does archery with a group and Lydia loves to watch her girl do her sport in a non-life-or-death environment
They ice skate and Lydia absolutely skates circles around Allison
Lydia has a list of date ideas and they go on a date once a week
Lydia and Allison are an incredible team, with Allison's weapons and Lydia's scream. They absolutely solve so many crimes
They both love rainy weather and puddles and jumping around in them. Both of them are working on embracing a more childlike mentality every once in a while
They spend a lot of time together but have hobbies apart from each other because Lydia thinks its probably healthiest for them
For their birthday's each year Allison and Lydia give each other stuffed animals
Allison has been trying to read more fantasy and has gotten really into Brandon Sanderson while Lydia is more of a Terry Pratchett reader
They are looking into getting a cat, names on the roster are; Garlic Bread; Nosferatu; Jimmy Jorts; Lord Tuffington; and Sylvester Tom III
[VISIBLY ABOUT TO START GNAWING MY OWN LEG OFF] no yeah haha i love change :)
being reckless and young is not how the damage got done!!!
Okay i might be a little pissed off. Expect typos, im on my phone.
Aziraphale and Crowley are not gay men.
They are played by male actors. They present male most of the time. But that means nothing, because gender presentation =/= gender identity or sex.
Neil has said multiple times that angels and demons are sexless. It's on the book. It's on several of his tweets and answers to asks. This implies that angels and demons are non-binary by default. Gabriel isn't a man, Michael isn't a woman, Beelzebub isn't a woman, Furfur isn't a man.
And now, you could argue that a genderless creature isn't necessarily queer and I agree! Several animals are genderless irl.
But here's what makes them queer: it's not that they don't have a gender, it's that they don't give a fuck about it. Crowley presents female i believe up to three times in the show, Neil was planning a minisode where both he and Aziraphale are fem-presenting in the 60s; Michael is a male angel name and he's played by an actress and (At least in the portuguese dub? Correct me if im wrong) still called "he". Same for Beelzebub, who I think is also reffered to with they/them in english. Hell, God has a female voice and is still called God (the male version of the word!!!) and even Her pronouns are a bit flexible in certain dubs.
What makes them queer is that their genderless aspect isn't just biological, it's their identity, too. These characters are all non-binary, they know it, and they don't mind it.
"But they present male and call each other 'he'!"
As I said, gender presentation does not equal identity and neither does pronouns. It's words: words that get often associated with a certain gender but are, in the end, just words.
Not only that, but this argument also comes from the expectation that non-binary people cannot present themselves in a binary way, which is an absurd thing to expect. People irl have all kinds of different hormonal balances and many enby folk may be hypermasculine or hyperfeminine due to high testosterone or estrogen respectively. And you know what? They might not want to change that, and that is completely fine.
Non binary people do not owe you androginy.
Being trans isn't about appearances, isn't about transitioning, it's about identity. Thinking otherwise is borderline transmedicalist ideology.
Good Omens breaks gender norms all the fucking time in both seasons, something many shows are afraid to do, and it's not just for comedy reasons, which tends to be the norm when shows do it. They do it because it's fun, it's fine, and because they acknowledge that gender norms are stupid.
That's queer as hell.
My second point, no need for labels. Just like angels and demons don't need gender labels, they don't need sexuality labels. At all. Especially since they're often intertwined.
Just because two characters don't have their specific labels revealed doens't mean they aren't queer or, fuck's sake, don't love each other.
In A League Of Their Own, no characters get specific labels, what they are is simply implied. Greta is very implied to be lesbian but they never say the exact word. Does that mean she isn't queer?
In The Song Of Achilles, no characters get specific labels because hell, the labels didn't exist at the time the story takes place in. Both main characters are implied to be bi/pansexual but it's obviously never told in the text. Does that mean they aren't queer?
In Undertale and Deltarune, no characters get specific labels, but in both games the main protagonist is nonbinary (and is in both cases a human being!) and both games have several mlm and wlw couples and several more nonbinary characters across the storyline, but it's never specifically labeled. Does that mean it doesn't have queer rep?
Neil has said several times that Good Omens is a love story, that Aziraphale and Crowley love each other, that even if they're not 'gay male humans' they still feel love for one another. That's the entire point of season two.
And now, I get it, okay? I don't like authors tip-toeing around labeling their characters either, especially since in most places we are past the age of having to code characters instead of just make them openly queer. I get the fear and uncertainty that often came from some sort of trauma from bbc's Sherlock, I felt it too. I get that for some it may seem as if it's queerbaiting, or pink money, or simply being too scared to say a character is queer.
But that's just not the case with Good Omens. The point is not to avoid labels because they're scary. The point is that, for Good Omens, and aziracrow, labels are useless. They're not humans, they don't have a gender, they don't need the labels.
And you know what?
That's also queer as hell.
Society has to put people into boxes, has to separate folk, has to label everyone. No one can be different, and id you are you need to fit this specific box of different. If you go out, you're too much, you're too rebellious, you're a freak. If they just let people do whatever they wanted it would be hard to marginalize them and keep the system going.
A quote I once heard feels important for this occasion:
"To define yourself is to restrain yourself."
When you define something in strict terms you're putting rules to it. Rules that can be broken. Rules that should be broken. And the rulebreakers get insulted, hated, violated, killed.
Aziraphale and Crowley are breaking these rules by 'existing' as who they are. They're not gay men, they're not lesbian women, they're not bisexual agenders, but at the same time they are all of those things at the same time, whenever they want to, whenever YOU want them to, as Neil himself put it. Because fuck labels. And you're hating them for it, hating them because they're refusing to enter those boxes.
Humans are weird and complex. Let the angels and demons be weird and complex too.
Lastly, queer relationships don't need sex - nor kisses.
There's this expectation that romantic love is only true love if they kiss, if they live together, if they sleep on the same bed, if they go on dates, if they marry, if they have kids, if they have sex. Break one of these and people will raise an eyebrow. Break two and they look at you weird. Break three and everyone judges you. Break all of them and, suddenly, you and your partner have been declared "just friends" by outsiders who don't know you in the slightest.
Welcome to amatonormativity.
Or, better saying, another stupid box, another set of rules.
There's this headcanon that Crowley kisses Aziraphale as a last resort not because it's a gesture if love (even Neil said it wasn't out of love) but because he's seen it in human movies and, in movies, kissing someone in despair is a cliché that often ends in the other person not leaving.
This wasn't a love kiss. But Crowley still loves Aziraphale. Do you know why?
Because angels and demons, most likely, do not need human gestures to show love. They, most likely, comprehend love in an entirely different light.
Maybe Aziraphale is touchy with Crowley because he likes it and that is a good enough reason, but it's an individual reason, just like a person irl might be more fond of hugging their partner than kissing them, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with it. There's no right or wrong way to have a relationship. Acting like there is is reinforcing the rules set by amatonormativity, and it is also completely disregarding the experiences of asexual and aromantic folk. The entire spectrums btw.
Now think about the rules I mentioned earlier. Must kiss, must fuck, must marry etc.
Aziracrow also breaks almost all of them.
That's also queer as hell!!!
Being queer and celebrating pride isn't about having labels. It's about breaking societal norms: heteronormativity, cisnormativity, mononormativity, amatonormativity, etc. Norms that are used to opress us, to put us in boxes, to separate us, to marginalize us, and to kill us.
A show that gives the middle finger to all of these and just tells its story however way it likes, not caring about labeling the characters or having a long monologue about homophobia or showing a explicit sex scene between the two characters or following any of those stupid rules imposed by society, a society ran by cishet folk, is as queer as a show can ever be.
To deny that is to reinforce a narrative that is literally used to opress us.
That's all, bye.
Also, some of you guys are giving "I call beez she/her because of the actress" and that's cringe, but not surprising, ngl.
“Lighten Up” by Ronald Wimberly
Beautifuly written- and drawn.
Yet another reminder that faking is a conscious choice that you make.
It is not something you can do accidentally, regards of what you're talking about.
You can't accidentally fake depression, or anxiety, or bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, or any other mental illness.
You can't accidentally fake Borderline Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, personality disorders.
You can't accidentally fake ADHD, autism, Tourette's Syndrome, auditory processing disorder, aphasia or any other neurodivergence
You can't accidentally fake being trans or ace-spec or aro-spec or any other LGBTQIA+ identity.
You can't accidentally fake chronic illnesses like CFS, fibromyalgia or any chronic illness.
You also can't accidentally fake being good/intelligent at something. You didn't fool your peers into reaching your position.
You can't accidentally fake trauma, PTSD/cPTSD, DID/OSDD/DDNOS or any other trauma-based disorder.
Tldr:
Faking is a conscious choice.
You cannot do it by accident.
If you are worried that you are faking, that in itself is proof that you are not.
we DO grow old and happy. btw.