Chkeononeanothr - All We Are Is Bullets

Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:

This shot through my brain like a chain of firecrackers, so, without derailing the original post, I have some THOUGHTS to add about why this concept is not only hilarious (because it is), but also...

It. It kind of fucks. Severely.

And in a delightfully Pratchett-y way, I'd dare to suggest.

I'll explain:

As inferred above, both Crowley AND Aziraphale have canonical Biblical counterparts. Not by name, no, but by function.

Crowley, of course, is the serpent of Eden.

(note on the serpent of Eden: In Genesis 3:1-15, at least, the serpent is not identified as anything other than a serpent, albeit one that can talk. Later, it will be variously interpreted as a traitorous agent of Hell, as a demon, as a guise of Satan himself, etc. In Good Omens --as a slinky ginger who walks funny)

Lesser known, at least so far as I can tell, is the flaming sword. It, too, appears in Genesis 3, in the very last line:

"So he drove out the man; and placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." --Genesis 3:24, KJV

Thanks to translation ambiguity, there is some debate concerning the nature of the flaming sword --is it a divine weapon given unto one of the Cherubim (if so, why only one)? Or is it an independent entity, which takes the form of a sword (as other angelic beings take the form of wheels and such)? For our purposes, I don't think the distinction matters. The guard at the gate of Eden, whether an angel wielding the sword or an angel who IS the sword, is Aziraphale.

(note on the flaming sword: in some traditions --Eastern Orthodox, for example-- it is held that upon Christ's death and resurrection, the flaming sword gave up it's post and vanished from Eden for good. By these sensibilities, the removal of the sword signifies the redemption and salvation of man.

...Put a pin in that. We're coming back to it.)

So, we have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword, introduced at the beginning and the end (ha) of the very same chapter of Genesis.

But here's the important bit, the bit that's not immediately obvious, the bit that nonetheless encapsulates one of the central themes, if not THE central theme, of Good Omens:

The Sword was never intended to guard Eden while Adam and Eve were still in it.

Do you understand?

The Sword's function was never to protect them. It doesn't even appear until after they've already fallen. No... it was to usher Adam and Eve from the garden, and then keep them out. It was a threat. It was a punishment.

The flaming sword was given to be used against them.

So. Again. We have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword: the inception and the consequence of original sin, personified. They are the one-two punch that launches mankind from paradise, after Hell lures it to destruction and Heaven condemns it for being destroyed. Which is to say that despite being, supposedly, hereditary enemies on two different sides of a celestial cold war, they are actually unified by one purpose, one pivotal role to play in the Divine Plan: completely fucking humanity over.

That's how it's supposed to go. It is written.

...But, in Good Omens, they're not just the Serpent and the Sword.

They're Crowley and Aziraphale.

(author begins to go insane from emotion under the cut)

In Good Omens, humanity is handed it's salvation (pin!) scarcely half an hour after losing it. Instead of looming over God's empty garden, the sword protects a very sad, very scared and very pregnant girl. And no, not because a blameless martyr suffered and died for the privilege, either.

It was just that she'd had such a bad day. And there were vicious animals out there. And Aziraphale worried she would be cold.

...I need to impress upon you how much this is NOT just a matter of being careless with company property. With this one act of kindness, Aziraphale is undermining the whole entire POINT of the expulsion from Eden. God Herself confronts him about it, and he lies. To God.

And the Serpent--

(Crowley, that is, who wonders what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway; who thinks that maybe he did a GOOD thing when he tempted Eve with the apple; who objects that God is over-reacting to a first offense; who knows what it is to fall but not what it is to be comforted after the fact...)

--just goes ahead and falls in love with him about it.

As for Crowley --I barely need to explain him, right? People have been making the 'didn't the serpent actually do us a solid?' argument for centuries. But if I'm going to quote one of them, it may as well be the one Neil Gaiman wrote ficlet about:

"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization." --Robert G. Ingersoll

The first to ask questions.

Even beyond flattering literary interpretation, we know that Crowley is, so often, discreetly running damage control on the machinations of Heaven and Hell. When he can get away with it. Occasionally, when he can't (1827).

And Aziraphale loves him for it, too. Loves him back.

And so this romance plays out over millennia, where they fall in love with each other but also the world, because of each other and because of the world. But it begins in Eden. Where, instead of acting as the first Earthly example of Divine/Diabolical collusion and callousness--

(other examples --the flood; the bet with Satan; the back channels; the exchange of Holy Water and Hellfire; and on and on...)

--they refuse. Without even necessarily knowing they're doing it, they just refuse. Refuse to trivialize human life, and refuse to hate each other.

To write a story about the Serpent and the Sword falling in love is to write a story about transgression.

Not just in the sense that they are a demon and an angel, and it's ~forbidden. That's part of it, yeah, but the greater part of it is that they are THIS demon and angel, in particular. From The Real Bible's Book of Genesis, in the chapter where man falls.

It's the sort of thing you write and laugh. And then you look at it. And you think. And then you frown, and you sit up a little straighter. And you think.

And then you keep writing.

And what emerges hits you like a goddamn truck.

(...A lot of Pratchett reads that way. I believe Gaiman when he says Pratchett would have been happy with the romance, by the way. I really really do).

It's a story about transgression, about love as transgression. They break the rules by loving each other, by loving creation, and by rejecting the hatred and hypocrisy that would have triangulated them as a unified blow against humanity, before humanity had even really got started. And yeah, hell, it's a queer romance too, just to really drive the point home (oh, that!!! THAT!!!)

...I could spend a long time wildly gesturing at this and never be satisfied. Instead of watching me do that (I'll spare you), please look at this gif:

I love this shot so much.

Look at Eve and Crowley moving, at the same time in the same direction, towards their respective wielders of the flaming sword. Adam reaches out and takes her hand; Aziraphale reaches out and covers him with a wing.

You know what a shot like that establishes? Likeness. Commonality. Kinship.

"Our side" was never just Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley says as much at the end of season 1 ("--all of us against all of them."). From the beginning, "our side" was Crowley, Aziraphale, and every single human being. Lately that's around 8 billion, but once upon a time it was just two other people. Another couple. The primeval mother and father.

But Adam and Eve die, eventually. Humanity grows without them. It's Crowley and Aziraphale who remain, and who protect it. Who...oversee it's upbringing.

Godfathers. Sort of.

hes so real

sciles season 5 breakup is soooo much it got me barking in 2025. neither of them are talking to the person in front of them! scott is talking to the person he thought he trusted most, the person who knew him better than his own mother when his life turned upside down and never quite righted itself again, the person who was there for him when he feared he may have killed someone, the person who scott's just been led to believe killed in cold blood and hid it from him, and suddenly the chilling of their dynamic can make sense, because if scott doesn't believe theo's explanation, what does that leave to explain the creeping distance between them? what's left? scott is talking to this person in an attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt despite fearing he already knows all he needs to; which is that stiles didn't trust him with this, which means he either doesn't trust scott anymore, what did scott do to make stiles not trust him anymore, or it must have been Bad, or both. it means scott's one safe place to land in this world where violence has become normalized, even and often from friendly faces, even his own father, is no longer the same safe place it had remained throughout all of it, through the worst moments of his life and before, he always had stiles. even when his mom choked on what he'd become, stiles didn't. and now stiles either doesn't trust him anymore or isn't safe anymore.

and stiles does the worst possible thing and defends the supposed violence out the gate! because he's talking to the person he's put on this pedestal, this person who he's watched up close grow from his best friend to a werewolf that could kill him in his sleep to the guy who's saved not only his life but so many others, including the most important person in his life; his dad, over and over again, he's seen scott do the impossible, and then some; even the things they grew up not knowing existed now bend for scott mccall, who no longer has asthma, who's good at lacrosse, who can get shot and stabbed and walk it off while stiles can barely keep up, and the one thing stiles has never seen him do is kill someone. stiles, who checked himself into eichen because he was afraid the thing under his skin would kill someone, and then it did, right in scott's arms, when stiles knows scott had his own version of the same thing, watched him struggle with it, watched him hurt himself just to stop and still never succumbed. true alpha scott mccall. even the laws of nature and unnature know how good he is. stiles watched the same world that tried to eat his best friend whole bow before him, and he watched people who never knew scott before they knew the werewolf look at him like he was their savior, and he didn't mean to start seeing him that way too and he doesn't know when he started to, but he did. he does, and he thinks there's no way, No Way someone like that sticks with someone who looked at a teenager turned killer in their death throes and thought about twisting the knife, self defense or no.

both of them are primed to face the worst versions of the situation and what that means for them going forward; the versions this new world has threatened to warp them into despite knowing each other before they entered it. that world swallowed them down so far they don't see each other anymore! they're ready and waiting to have their worst fears confirmed and in that fear they do the exact things to confirm it to each other!

what's more is that scott forgives countless people who've killed in cold blood and otherwise throughout the show. he has allies who've killed people when they didn't have to, when they did, allies who'd killed werewolves whether they needed to or not. hell, he allies his pack with theo a season later, the guy who fucking killed him. stiles has no reason to think scott would suddenly kick him to the curb for something like this other than projecting his own feelings of condemnation onto the pinnacle of morality in his life. the issue isn't the violence, it's the idea of stiles perpetrating it. scott has plenty of people in his life he's overlooked violence for, including his very own father, he just never thought stiles would be one of them. could be. and neither did stiles! and that shift in their dynamic scares them so much they're already mourning the loss when it's not even gone, just different. changed, like everything else in their godawful lives. they were the only thing left that hadn't, and in fearing for this loss they only doomed themselves to losing more.

there’s something that’s incredible about the intersectionality and flexibility of werewolves as metaphor.

anger issues? werewolf. intrusive thoughts? werewolf. unresolved trauma? werewolf. rejection by society? werewolf. autism? werewolf. transgenderism? werewolf. queer expression of any sort? werewolf. plurality? werewolf. dissociation? werewolf. repression of any sort? werewolf. abuse cycles? werewolf. emotion so strong it physically changes you? werewolf!!!

really doing it all

Here's what sticks in my craw: why ON EARTH does fanon imagine that Cas has 'self-esteem issues' and experiences his love for Dean as a wet, miserable kind of yearning? What is it about any part of anything that happens on Supernatural makes anyone think that Cas, a cosmic, Eldritch being, a warrior of god, who literally hung the stars and has existed for a bazillion years, is reduced to teenage angst by Dean's pussy?

Like, when Cas says "the one thing I want I know I can't have" why do y'all think it's a piece of Dean's ass? Why does ANYONE think Cas doesn't know Dean loves him? Dean has shown Cas he loves him with literally everything he has again and again and again. Even the way Dean feels like Cas can absorb his anger is Dean showing Cas love and trust. Cas and Dean have chosen each other, forgiven each other, and been the only reliable thing in each others' lives over, and over and over again. Cas fucking knows that Dean loves him. Cas can literally hear Dean's thoughts, and feel his yearning. Cas was only saying the quiet part out loud when he said he loved Dean, because it was already obvious! If there was anyone feeling wet and lovesick, it would be DEAN, if he ever had a break in the battle to fucking feel things, which he did not.

Like, hear me out: what if the one thing Cas knows he can't have is the one thing he knows he signed over to the empty? His happiness, and by extension, Dean's, because he knows Dean loves him? What if Cas is saying: I know I can't have this thing I want for myself: to be the one to MAKE YOU HAPPY, but I can save you, and maybe Cas's belief in Dean is such that he still hopes and believes Dean will find a way to make himself happy if he lives.

After Cas's death, Dean is trying to live for him. Trying to be what Cas believed he was. It's what CANONICALLY gives Dean the strength to defeat Chuck by not killing him! And, after Dean's death, he CANONICALLY goes in search of happy endings. Like... THAT IS EXPLICITLY STATED.

I AM HAVING AN ALL CAPS MOMENT, SO SUE ME.

Guys, Cas is not a wet, yearning baby who needs Dean to say or do ANYTHING to validate his love. HE KNOWS. He is a being of unimaginable age and power. He is not beleaguered by self-esteem issues, or the need to tongue-wrestle Dean. Like, he might WANT TO, but he CANONICALLY does not need to in order to experience a happiness so complete that it puts paid to his deal. His happiness is THAT NOW DEAN ALSO KNOWS, and he can tell Dean why, and show him who he is in the mirror of that love.

Also, he is not dead, he is just on another plane of existence, and neither is Dean. Cas is a profoundly unselfish badass. He is not fucking PINING. He made a play, the best one he had. He is a strategist, and he knows Dean BY HEART.

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.

drunk and thinking about Eddie Diaz and how he’s such a good dad and how he loves everyone in his life like it’s the easiest thing to do. how he loves like he breathes - it’s natural, it’s just what he does to live. how it broke him to learn that everyone he’d saved had died, because all he’s ever wanted to do was make sure those he cared about were okay. how he’s devoted his entire LIFE to the lives of others. how he ballroom danced as a child and loved it and felt free until his parents sucked all the joy from it. how he was scared to be a dad but did it anyway and would do anything for his son a thousand times over. how he’s so righteous and cares so fiercely and once he’s made his mind up that’s IT. how he loves like his life depends on it, because let’s face it, it does. how Eddie Diaz is made of love and that’s all he ever wants to give back to people.

stomach hurts from hunger. stomach hurts from eating. what the hell do yuou want from me you stupid fucking organ

To myself: “It’s ok to make bad art it’s ok to make bad art it’s ok to make bad art it’s ok to make bad art”

*the art is bad*

Let's talk about Shax and Furfur

I don't see a lot of discussion about them, but I think these two are worth paying attention to.

Shax is one of those demons who is not inherently evel, she is more of a "make the best of the current situation" person, she is trying to make a career not by stepping on others, but by forming alliances. She offers a mutually beneficial alliance to Crowley, a traitor hunted by hell, but she's like, that's fine, I can try and work with him, I have a lot to learn from him. Formally, Crowley does not agree to an information exchange with Shax, but nonetheless he is talking to her: helping her fix the boiler, telling a bit more about the Earth, telling her that they'll work on her sarcasm recognition skills next time. They are not friends, but Shax tries to keep it as civil as it can possibly be.

And then there is Furfur, with whom Shax is at least a friendly colleague, but more likely they know each other well and are actually friends. This alliance is formed in the same way of doing favours (and we know who else formed their alliance at least in part based on favours). Note, she never actually breaks her promise to Furfur, and she tries to pull him along where she can: she promises to get him an audience with the Dark Council and she does, she is sympathetic when it does not go well. He shows up in the bookshop, so he did get a bit higher in the hierarchy, but also note how it is Furfur pointing out the opportunity for Shax, while Dagon (who you would think would be the one to be promoted by Beelzebbub) just stands there.

If Shax takes over the throne, with Furfur as her close alliance, this opens a good setup for Crowley to come in and influence them. He might bring in the news that Heaven is planning a war to erase them from the book of life, or that if there is a second coming the amount of soul-processing workload might increase exponentially! The point is, both Shax (already offered him beneficial alliance) and Furfur ("We've done loads together!") would be open to Crowley's influence, and they might indeed want to let Earth continue its existence.

I suppose we shall have to wait and see, but I think we will yet see more of these two