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graceallisonsworld · 5 months
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[ID: A video recording of Bisan Owda, filming herself standing still and speaking in front of a car underneath the morning sky in Gaza, with the sun visible above her head. Loud sirens can be heard around her as she says:
"Hey, everyone. This is Bisan from Gaza. We're still alive, and we wish you a merry Christmas in the Christmas eve. Wish you a merry Christmas despite the churches of Gaza are closed, full of displaced people, and surrounded with snipers. We wish you a merry Christmas despite the children, women, men, Christians and Muslims of Gaza are murdered and under genocide. We wish you a merry Christmas despite that we cannot exchange gifts or spend our holidays in our homes because they are completely destroyed, and merry Christmas despite there are hundreds of killed, decomposed bodies in the the north of Gaza Strip in the streets, at least 137 them are field executed by the Israeli soldiers in front of their children. Merry Christmas, but pray for Gaza."
End ID.]
Please think about why these videos are coming out in English. In your tongue, so that you can understand them. Don't ignore them or get tired of seeing them or call them guilt-trippy. Don't stop talking about Palestine. Make Palestine impossible to ignore. Even at the cost of "disrupting" your celebrations.
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graceallisonsworld · 7 months
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heartbreaking:
girl has sooooooo many ambitions and ideas for projects but can only get 1.5 basic tasks done per day
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graceallisonsworld · 7 months
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The idea of Crowley previously being a very powerful angel and still carrying around shards of that power is just so delicious to me. I'm a sucker for characters who aren't at all what they used to be. Underdogs who were obviously once a Big Deal, and you can't see it most of the time, until some improbable bit of classified knowledge or mention of higher connections leaks out. Especially if they really don't like to talk about it or dwell on who they were, if for one reason or another, they want to leave it all in the past.
I have had a feeling about Crowley since season 1. His position on Hell's hierarchy is relatively low, so it's not immediately apparent at first. But things stood out. How he bends reality to his will without seeming to even think about it, sometimes even without realizing. He decides it would be funnier if the paint guns were real guns, but also makes sure no one actually gets shot. This seems to take no effort or concentration on his part; it's done almost offhandedly. Or how he drives the Bentley through a wall of fire, keeping it from falling apart by sheer determination, while the much higher-ranking demon in the seat next to him is discorporated in seconds. Almost as impressive is how he negotiates London traffic, which from what I've heard is a borderline miraculous feat normally, let alone at 90 miles per hour.
And of course, the time stopping. Something even Aziraphale apparently isn't capable of. Something that, with a particularly fierce effort, literally stops Satan in his tracks. The sort of power wielded by a cosmic engineer who once needed it to do his job - 'I helped build that one,' he says, eyes a little distant as stares at a picture of a nebula - and he still carries it with him, skulking around on Earth, far from the cosmos he helped to create. Having let go of most of the rest, even the memories of it, burying them with the person he used to be. He's changed who he is but he can't change what he is, and if you cracked open that lowly serpent, you'd be blinded by the starlight within.
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graceallisonsworld · 8 months
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I don’t believe in destiny, but if destiny exists, then it is heading for Donna Noble.
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graceallisonsworld · 8 months
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“Aziraphale, we are in DANGER.”
My god you’re pretty.
“DANGER ZONE. HERE.”
Look at your pretty yellow eyes.
“There are demons outside our bookshop.”
Oh my god he said our.
“Are you listening to me?”
I adore you.
“AZIRAPHALE.”
Let’s dance first.
“WE ARE GOING TO DIE.”
Did he change his shirt for the event? Goodness. He is the handsomest angel and demon and human being I’ve ever seen.
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graceallisonsworld · 8 months
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if u call me baby in that soft voice i’ll do whatever u want me to do
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graceallisonsworld · 8 months
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the thing about doctor who is that its only good when the writers remember that the doctor is Literally Just Some Guy. doctor who should be a show about a weird annoying burnout who travels through space and hangs out with humans because his own species don’t want him. whenever the show buys into the idea of the doctor being a Very Important Universally Beloved Hero Prophesized To Save The World instead of a cosmic dipshit driving a busted old car he stole on graduation day doing the alien equivalent of backpacking across europe the show starts hardcore sucking
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graceallisonsworld · 8 months
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sometimes the best fanfics are written by middle aged adults with years of writing experience who simply know how to craft a good story. but also sometimes the best fanfics are written by a sixteen year old girl with something deeply wrong with her
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graceallisonsworld · 8 months
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Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:
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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:
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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.
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graceallisonsworld · 8 months
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So I was watching this old video again because the new Good Omens season triggered my obsession with Neil Gaiman's stories that creeps up periodically ( and his voice is soothing to listen to while I draw) And at about 1:25:30 there's a part that really made me giggle, cause this is what he says when asked about themes in his work:
"I remember once somebody asked me about the kiss that would occur in my books three quarters of the way through, to indicate that we were now moving into act three. And I said 'what'. And they said 'well you must be conscious of it, you do it every time.'"
And I mean...
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graceallisonsworld · 9 months
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beloved 🫶
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Doctor Who The Impossible Planet | 2.08
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graceallisonsworld · 9 months
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crowley must have known that aziraphale was also in love with him, he tidied the bookshop, he was planning on taking him to the Ritz after his confession, he had their song queued in the car these are not acts of someone who wasn't sure what the outcome will be.
which makes it so much more painful that he still confessed his love for aziraphale with tears in his eyes and on the verge of a full blown panic attack, he left saying "don't bother" but he still waited by his car til the elevator doors closed. all because
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graceallisonsworld · 9 months
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literally cant name a single role hes played that doesn’t fit this
David Tennant in interviews is just a Nice Scottish Man and then every director he works with goes you are a SLUT!!! And you are SO SO SAD!!
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graceallisonsworld · 9 months
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Love the Good Omens writers having a whole subplot where a character repeatedly calls David Tennant’s character ‘Doctor’ . It’s what I would do and I respect it
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graceallisonsworld · 9 months
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Countdown to the 60th anniversary rewatch | 2.01: New Earth
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graceallisonsworld · 9 months
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please enjoy my favorite “no context” moments from good omens 2
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graceallisonsworld · 9 months
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Cringe started as a verb describing a physical reaction, i.e.: "I cringe when I see [x]."
Modern slang has turned cringe into an adjective describing anything to which a person might have such a reaction.
.
This shift in language is illustrative of a shift in culture.
.
For a while there, in the early 2000s, there was this big sex positivity movement and we talked openly about kink and queer sexuality and creating a culture of consent that broke away from traditional conservative ideas of moral respectability.
And now we are in the midst of this giant purity culture backlash, this giant push for rigid conformity all over the internet. Anything that deviates from the norm even remotely is ridiculed.
And this cultural shift is perfectly encapsulated in this singular linguistic shift, this verb becoming a noun.
The Revenge of the Pearl Clutchers
That's what "cringing" is. It's pearl clutching.
When the pearl clutchers turned cringe into an adjective, they turned a reaction into an accusation. The pearl clutchers don't want to take responsibility for their own kneejerk emotions. They want to blame YOU.
They are saying, "My disgust isn't the fault of my own backwards prejudices. It is YOU who are inherently disgusting. My inability to cope with even the slightest deviation from norm is not the problem here. YOUR refusal to rigidly conform is the problem. I am not the one who is cringing. YOU are the one who is cringe."
Fuck 'em.
.
Take the word back.
Cringe is not something people are.
It's something judgmental assholes do.
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