How Do You Know If You're In Love???

when i watched good omens, i didn’t expect to love tv crowley, and it fuckin blindsided me. all at once, i thought, oh gosh, damn, and fuck, roughly in that order, and here’s why.

where tv crowley and book crowley most significantly diverge is the bookshop fire. in the book, “Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below.” in the tv show, instead of cursing him, he calls out for him desperately before falling to the floor with a quiet “you’ve gone.” for book crowley, az is “Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.” for tv crowley, aziraphale is his “best friend.” naturally, in the bookshop fire, tv crowley is in fucking agony. this is not how book crowley reacts.

see, one of book crowley’s most basic traits is his optimism. “Because, underneath it all,” the book says, “Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times—he thought briefly of the fourteenth century—then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.”

it’s a really beautiful passage. and i can’t relate to it at all. 

after the fire, book crowley thinks he might “get completely and utterly pissed out of his mind while he waited for the world to end.” where book crowley only considers it, tv crowley actually does it. he does go to wait out the end of the world while drunk, and does give up, and he does break down, and he is not an optimist; he is a mess. that struck me. i’ve never seen a heroic character so blatantly need help before. but crowley gets help; he finds a friend and confesses how much aziraphale means to him; he gets back in the car and forges onward through the fire, even though he’s clearly Not Okay.

and there, on the flaming m25, book crowley and tv crowley diverge again. tv crowley is not an optimist; he’s not holding the bentley together with the hope that it’ll all work out. but he does it anyway. tv crowley doesn’t have optimism, but he has something that is, to me, even more important. in the show, “Crowley has something no other demons have, especially not Hastur: an imagination.”

an imagination. strangely enough, in the book, crowley admits to lacking it: “They’ve got what we lack. They’ve got imagination,” book crowley says. but tv crowley has that imagination, and that is what saves him–and that, to me, makes so much sense.

tv crowley is traumatised. when he fell, some part of him broke, and while he claims he “sauntered vaguely downwards,” he really took a “million-light-year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulphur,” and it hurt. tv crowley is hurt. and so am i. 

i also give up. i also break down. i don’t, and can’t, ever believe that the universe is looking out for me–or for anyone. i am not an optimist. but you know what? i have imagination. i have friends. and if it came down to me to help save the world, that is exactly what i would rely on.

Elizabeth rendering Darcy speechless

Bonus gif:

Rama and Sita never overhear the dhobi before her pregnancy comes to term

1. Most of Kaikeyi’s power died with Dasharatha and his love with her, but still she has enough influence to overhear the rumors that spread through the city–and, more importantly, to ensure that the wells and taverns that Rama visits in disguise do not mention them. 

Let him confront those ugly truths once his wife delivers Ayodhya its heirs and if he should object, then let him consider: she has done him so many offenses already; what is one more?

2. The child – no, children, and fine sons, too!–are born, and Kaikeyi lets it be known that to challenge their legitimacy would be to deprive Rama of the heirs he loves so well. For a time, it works: Ayodhya loves Rama enough to allow him his happiness.

But all too well she knows it will not last. Did she love him, too, and still prove the cause of fourteen years’ unhappiness? So too will they turn on him, and his blameless queen; unless Kaikeyi can seek to do otherwise. 

3. Crowds always need a scapegoat, and too well Kaikeyi knows one that will suffice. Public opinion has forgiven only because of Rama’s request; and so it is all to easy to sow a word here, a suggestion there, that all the rage and mistrust they feel towards Sita ought to be directed towards the real instigator of mischief, who lives in the palace still, having escaped any punishment for her crimes. 

It works; of course it does. Kaikeyi has lived in Ayodhya for almost forty years, and knows it like the palm of her hand; and just as in the palm of her hand, she can read the signs of her downfall in the crowds’ angry faces. 

4. Before Rama must answer that he allows the criminal responsible for his father’s death to live simply because she is his stepmother, Kaikeyi volunteers herself to return to Kekaya. Too long she has lived apart from her mountains, she says wistfully; and her brother longs for her company. 

She will listen to no protests, not from Rama, nor her fellow wives–and Ayodhya, pleased with itself, forgets its complaints against its queen entirely. 

5. The night before she is to leave, Bharat comes to her for the first time in fifteen years. He knows, of course; any son of hers must. She managed to teach him at least that much. 

“If you expect me to forgive you, simply for what you did for bhabhi-”

“I did nothing but act according to my own nature,” Kaikeyi interrupts coldly. As much as she longs for Bharat’s return, she does not want it to be under such terms. “Manipulation is my only skill; surely I must use it to relieve my own boredom.”

“You’ll never change,” he declares, and still his voice is thick with anger. But he touches her feet before he goes, and in the morning, stands on the stairs and watches Kaikeyi’s departing palanquin until it fades out of view. 

So tonight I joined my parents, and the neighbours, at the local pub quiz. We won, and won the bonus round, much to the annoyance of the other teams. Apparently my parents and their friends win every other week. Nerds. So to prank them the landlord had a special “Super Hard Pub Question” for us for double or nothing on our prize (vouchers for a gallon of beer) to let the rest of the pub feel better because we were “guaranteed to lose” since there was “no way we could know the answer.” I got picked to answer it because I’m the youngest and have less General Knowledge.

The question?

“What is the word for beer in Ancient Egyptian?”

Pub: *loud raucous laughter and cheering*

Landlord: *looks smug*

Me: Do you want that in English or in the original Hieroglyphs?

Landlord: The hieroglyphs of course!

Pub: *more laughter*

Me: *scribbles quickly in the 10 seconds I had to answer*

Landlord: Fuck. Me. 

Pub: *utter silence broken only by someone at the back exclaiming WTF* 

Landlord: How did you even know that?

Me: You picked the one person here who can read them?

Landlord: Oh shit it’s you isn’t it?

Dad yelling from the back: SURPRISEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

It’s safe to say we’re simultaneously fucking legends/not very popular at the local right now.

When someone says these days sexism and misogyny don’t exist anymore show them this.

When New Yorkers hear a violin 🤣🤣🕺🏾🔥

it occurs to me that many fans have never experienced the illuminated-capital illustrations in early Good Omens books.

it’s a super short scene in the show but it says so much. crowley never does anything that really harms anyone (see: paintballs & pennies & phone lines), little of it is cruel in the ways that humans can be cruel — which makes it even more meaningful that he chooses humanity in the end. sure, he needs to drink for days to deal with it, but when he’s sober again, he stays