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quoththemaiden · 2 months

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@mrghostrat This is now the third time since December that I'm writing about your middle-aged men and their middle-aged-man problems (1, 2). Please come collect them, because they're causing a disturbance.

Or, if you aren't able to wrangle them, then please enjoy this scene inspired by Chapter 10 of Big Name Feelings.

For everyone who hasn't already seen the top portion of this on Discord, know that this is set sometime after the con but before the big bang.

—

"I think your hair might be getting long enough to braid now."

Crowley's eyes snapped over to him. "Braid?"

Aziraphale blinked at the sharp question. "I didn't mean anything by it." He'd still never figured out quite where Crowley's gender identity lay, or if it changed day-by-day. He suspected Crowley's public presentation of his gender was either "whatever's simplest for everyone involved" (around people he didn't know but generally liked, like at the con) or "whatever causes the most problems for everyone involved" (like with a particularly annoying security guard that had left Aziraphale remembering that being middle-aged, white, and extremely stuffy in appearance was its own form of armor). Aziraphale's own perception of Crowley's gender was just "Crowley." What Crowley felt about it was something Aziraphale had never quite managed to parse out. "You can do whatever you like—"

"Do you know how?"

"How...?"

"To braid hair." Crowley's tone was oddly urgent. "Like for your nieces or cousins or—"

"—for crafting, yes. Tassels for bookmarks and such. You want me to—" Crowley practically flinging himself down onto the sofa next to him was answer enough. "Oh."

Crowley's hair really was barely long enough to braid, Aziraphale decided as he gently freed it from its elastic band. He ran his fingers through it slowly and carefully, easing out the light tangles from a day's confinement. Crowley slumped forward in boneless contentment, and Aziraphale had to switch to prickling the top of his scalp with his fingernails to get him to sit up straight enough for Aziraphale to work.

Aziraphale determined his gameplan, then, and gently eased up a few locks of hair at the crown of Crowley's head, smoothing down the top with the flat of his palm. He started working the strands into a French braid, taking it tiny piece by tiny piece to ensure every section was balanced in size. If Crowley were doing it himself, he suspected he'd get it done in just five messy joins, but every strand he brought in gave Aziraphale another excuse to run his fingertips along Crowley's scalp and he luxuriated in each opportunity. "Has anyone ever told you your hair is unreasonably thick?" he murmured, his voice huskier with fond affection than he'd intended. Crowley spared him from a tease by being too utterly sedated to manage more than a vague hum in response. Aziraphale smiled at that and kept his progress blissfully slow and methodical until he had no choice but to tie the braid off at the nape of Crowley's neck — half a French braid, half a ponytail made bushy from having had waves worked into it. He placed a soft kiss to the back of Crowley's head, padded by the thickest part of Crowley's braid and somehow all the more intimate for it. "All done, love."

Crowley leaned back against Aziraphale's chest, tilting back his head to look up at him with eyes made impossibly soft with contentment. "I'm never putting my own hair up again. Just hope you know that."

Aziraphale chuckled softly, just as fond. "I'll manage somehow, I suppose."

—

Crowley's boneless appreciation of the hair braiding had turned into boneless napping, and while Aziraphale enjoyed having Crowley fall asleep against him at certain times of day, he had never been one for naps himself and there was a limit to how long he could stay motionless sans entertainment before even he got antsy. He eased his way out from under Crowley, grateful the other man was a heavy sleeper even during the day, and was left deciding what quiet amusement he could pursue until whenever Crowley woke up and started making noises about dinner. He could always read some fanfics, of course, but his eyes couldn't help but be drawn towards his favorite muse.

His muse who had, he recalled, tempted him into joining a rigged bang and had talked him into getting a digital tablet. Aziraphale still planned to do his official art for it traditionally, because he was sure Crowley's writing would deserve no less... and, if he was allowed to be vain in the privacy of his own mind, because he still remembered the feeling he'd had when Crowley responded to his scans with barely coherent keysmashing. He wasn't in deferential awe of Crowley anymore, although he still loved his writing just as much, but part of him still hoped that Crowley might respond with just as much enthusiasm at getting to see the finished piece in person, textured paper and unprocessed colors and all. Well, assuming he could be gutsy enough to actually give it to him in person instead of just leaving it on the drafting table for him to find, which was really the more statistically likely result. But anyway.

But anyway.

His muse was sleeping in front of him, and a stylus on an iPad would make hardly any noise at all. And if he got good enough at using it, maybe he could draw some extra digital art to celebrate the fic as well.

In any case, sketching Crowley while he slept was one of life's little joys. He didn't think Crowley knew how often he did it, and that was probably for the best. If he did it all in his notebook, it would have been too easy for Crowley to flip through and find the sketches (and removing sheets would have felt damnably like a guilty conscience). With his iPad, however, he was safe to sketch as much as he liked and there was no real way for Crowley to stumble across it. Aziraphale willfully shoved aside the thought that that didn't really sound any less guilty and started setting stylus to screen. It wasn't long until he'd settled into a comfortable rhythm, his eyes flicking back and forth between the screen and where Crowley was lying face-down on the sofa, his new braid highlighted in a beam of afternoon sunlight.

Something Aziraphale did appreciate about digital art was that white could be layered on top of other colors and be shockingly vibrant, which wasn't an effect he could get easily with his beloved watercolors. Something else watercolors didn't give him was the ability to pick out very fine details, and as his sketch started coming together, he found that was exactly what he wanted to do now. While Crowley's hair was a vibrant red in his selfies or on stage, when he'd had the opportunity to run his fingers through every strand, he'd found that Crowley's hair was showing his age just as much as his own was.

The first day Aziraphale had found a grey hair had come as a shock. He'd naively assumed that with his hair being as pale as it was, even if it started greying, he might well never know. Instead, he found that the grey hairs' texture was frustratingly different from the strands that were still blond, and until they reached a critical mass fifteen long years later, they had an unfortunate tendency to stick out unattractively if his cut was anything less than perfect. He had become quite a regular at his barber's.

With Crowley's hair being as long as it was, his grey hairs had worked smoothly into his braid. From even the small distance from couch to armchair, they melded into the red strands perfectly... but Aziraphale had just spent long minutes twining them into neat twists and didn't need to see them now to know they were there. Aziraphale zoomed in close (another marked benefit of the digital display) and set his pen to a thin, sharp line, layering sleek silver strands into the red braid he'd drawn. Following the way they weaved around each other and dipped in and out of view felt delightfully meditative.

Eventually, Crowley made a soft snuffling snort-groan as he roused from his nap, slowly turning to unbury his face from the pillows. "Wha' time'zit?" he mumbled, patting around blindly for his cellphone.

"Coming up on 5:30 now," Aziraphale replied softly, trying not to startle him into full wakefulness too quickly. He rose and fetched Crowley's phone, placing it gently into his fumbling hand. "There you go."

"Mmrrr. Don't need it now." Crowley tucked the phone under his side in what Aziraphale would have guessed would be a very uncomfortable fashion but which Crowley did without even thinking. At least it wouldn't be going anywhere from there, Aziraphale supposed. "What're you doin'?" Crowley made grabby hands at the iPad Aziraphale had brought over with him.

Aziraphale handed over the iPad without even one thought, much less a second. "Oh, I was just waiting for you to wake up, really."

"...Angel." Crowley had zoomed out on the picture (with a completely unsurprising lack of propriety) and was now staring, frozen and much more awake, at the drawing of himself. "You aren't going to post this on Tumblr, are you?"

Aziraphale laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of that, despite the ripple of shock Crowley's tense tone had caused him. "Come, now. When have I ever posted a drawing of you, my dear?"

"When have you ever made a drawing of me?" Crowley retorted. He waved vaguely at the screen, accidentally sparing Aziraphale from having to answer. "I don't mind being old, but I don't want the world knowing my boyfriend thinks I'm old." His frazzled waving turned a little more flaily.

"Crowley..." Aziraphale gently took the tablet back from him and set it down on the floor so he could take Crowley's hand in both of his. "I assure you, I'm not the kind of artist who spends my time drawing things I don't think are beautiful. And that includes every detail I put in."

Aziraphale would have hoped that was obvious, really. The strands of hair he had drawn weren't brittle grey; they were molten silver. They caught the light like a precious metal woven like a ribbon into cinnabar-red hair. Crowley could have been a queen, fallen asleep after a long day in her finery. He could have been a fae whose very essence was beauty, sleeping with no fear that it would be stolen away because it couldn't.

He could have been an ordinary man, who was so deeply, truly loved that even his grey hairs seemed to shine like the soft gleam of a newly-forged star when they caught the last strong beams of afternoon sunlight shining in through the windows.

Aziraphale hoped Crowley could see it, too.

Crowley made a grumpy noise. "I still don't want it on Tumblr. — Not that I can tell you what to do with your art, but—"

Aziraphale interrupted him with a warm smile. "I don't want it on Tumblr, either. I drew this just for me."

"...really? Even though...?"

"Just for me," Aziraphale whispered in confirmation, his eyes seeking out Crowley's and saving him from having to finish that sentence. "I've only ever drawn you for me." I love you to the point of creation, his heart sang. It wasn't quite how that quote went, he knew. It was the only way it had ever gone, for him.

"Hn..." Crowley shifted to look at the iPad where it lay down on the floor. "I suppose... Well. Despite the subject matter, you drew it well, at least."

"Well, thank you for that," Aziraphale jibed back lightly, completely devoid of malice.

"Ngh, you can't blame me for feeling self-conscious about my greys when you haven't got any."

Aziraphale let out a huff of a laugh. "Oh, Crowley."

"What?" Crowley looked defensive, then abruptly switched to looking shrewd. "Wait. Do you dye them??" He leaned forward eagerly, like this was taboo knowledge.

"Oh, where was that compliment two decades ago? No, not at all. Do you know how long I spent getting over feeling self-conscious about them, and now for you to not even realize I have them?"

"No way. You've been holding out on me!" Crowley's eyes had a light in them that Aziraphale had seen sometimes — the look of someone who has been wanting something very much and thinks he's just figured out how to get it. Aziraphale drew back instinctively in trepidation. He had no idea what Crowley could possibly be wanting, though a fluttering feeling in his chest suggested that it was, in some way, him.

Ridiculous. As if they hadn't had sex already.

"I'm going to go get dinner started."

Crowley let out a whine that cut off abruptly enough that Aziraphale suspected he actually hadn't intended to make it.

Aziraphale paused. "What?"

"Ehhh... just envious, s'all."

Aziraphale took a moment to muse about whether Crowley knew the difference between "envious" and "jealous" and decided, firmly, that he had faith that he did. "Of what?" he asked with an incredulous laugh, since he still had no idea what "envious" could possibly apply to here.

"Negghhh, you've gotten to play with my hair enough to know I have greys, and I haven't gotten to touch yours once."

Aziraphale blushed darkly at that, remembering some choice occasions in which Crowley had gripped his hair tightly enough to hurt. He cleared his throat and opted not to mention them. "That feels much more like your fault than mine."

"Just... tryin'a respect your boundaries, angel."

"Why would that be a boundary?" Aziraphale asked, baffled.

"I asked for it and you haven't."

Aziraphale didn't quite remember it that way, but it was a fair enough interpretation from Crowley's point of view, he supposed. "Well, no. It sounds perfectly nice, but I'd hate to bore you with it. I know you're much more fidgety than I am."

"Not bored," Crowley insisted, his eyes urgent. "Never bored when it's you, angel. Siddown."

Aziraphale laughed breathily. "Too late. I'm already up to cook dinner."

"Angel."

"You'll just have to wait," Aziraphale teased in a singsong lilt, casting a smile back at Crowley over his shoulder.

Crowley flung himself back on the couch with an impatient whine, leaving Aziraphale feeling very smug about his attempt at whatever the romantic equivalent of foreplay was. Crowley sounded very much like he was being left with blue balls. "Bastard."

"Only as much as you deserve, my dear," Aziraphale sang back as he went into the kitchen, acutely aware of Crowley's eyes following every step.

—

It wasn't really in question, at all, that Aziraphale would end the evening snuggled on the couch with Crowley's hands in his hair. There was also no question that he'd enjoy it thoroughly, and he also knew it wasn't the kind of thing that was likely to lead to anything more. So, instead, he just relaxed into it and let his thoughts drift.

"...do you really think I'd mind if my red fox turned into a silver fox?" he mused. The thought was languid, easy, relaxed. Crowley spluttered in incoherent surprise anyway, and Aziraphale laughed softly. "Yes, I know. There's a reason I'm not the writer of the pair."

"Y'are, though. Don't think I've forgotten that you are."

Aziraphale blushed a little at that. "Oh."

Crowley's hands resumed their meditative motion through Aziraphale's hair. "But... yeah. I'd rock it, wouldn't I?"

"You would," Aziraphale murmured with a smile. "And I'm quite looking forward to seeing it someday, my dear."

#good omens #ineffable husbands #bnf au #fanfiction of fanfiction #my writing #not actually about asexuality but let's be honest that hair-petting scene was my kind of ace #apologies for any misrepresentation about watercolors #seriously bilvy come get your middle-aged men and their middle-aged-man problems out of my head #and be aware that if you leave time between posting future chapters then i might have to write more and nobody wants that

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thunderboltfire · 2 months

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I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.

It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages" And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series. Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.

The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.

What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.

But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.

There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel. it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.

On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.

But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.

My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.

The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.

I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it! The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.

It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important. And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.

And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?

There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.

#The witcher #Sorry if its convoluted I just got reminded of something and it made me a little angry #and as I had this conversation a lot of times I've decided to put it into written text #sorry about being bitter #but these are some of my favourite books and I'm still upset when I get reminded how badly they were treated in the recent adaptation #I'm not saying you should never change anything #But it's good to have enough background to understand why some things are the way they are in the original #and to understand what the source material is about #we don't talk about particular character's looks or something (altough I feel they could care more about it too)#but central themes tropes and motifs #long post #it may seem like I'm talking from a high horse here #people are welcome to interpret literature however they want #Nobody has a monopol on themes #I just think that in this particular case the cultural context influences the worldbuilding #and if changed it doesn't have the same impact anymore #meta

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