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kazbrekkerrs-remade · 4 years

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ekrjhak i lov eu and to further enable you: ur thoughts on blue, gansey, ronan and adam and henry? and their group dynamic????? 👀👀👀

Wow this took me ages sorry dfjfhd. Claire... u enable me too much these are my onions <3. Under a cut because I went. overboard :3. I’m probably going to have to shorten this I don’t know if tumblr will even let me post something this long dkshjfhg. (Also I wrote half of this in word so if there’s proper capitalization in places that’s why, don’t let it cloud my image as a cool, laid-back bitch that doesn’t care for grammar.)

i’m starting individually then moving onto group dynamics heh

blue i like blue but it did take a bit of growing on me djjdjhjss. i like her a lot bc i relate to her a lot, but i do think there was a lot of room for improvement. she said she wanted to see the world and make it better but how exactly.. is that a roadtrip? i mean i guess it’s a start in a way, but i think it would’ve been much better if we saw her join an activist organization.. volunteer for a non-profit or something. Also her misguided feminism ah! But I can be a bit more lenient with that bc she was still very young when the series ended so. Also she was revealed to be part tree and then like. Nothing substantial came of it? idk

Ganseyboy! I have to be honest my.. fave uwu. There is a Lot of room for improvement but I just. Optimist!! insecurities :( also he KNEW he was gonna d*e I’m. sad. Anyway like I said a lot of room for improvement as in like.. not everything is about you king <3 also he needs more… idk I don’t wanna say empathy bc i think that’s something different but like. He needs to realise that what he thinks is best isn’t gonna be the way everyone deals with something, if that makes sense? Like basically the “how do you know what’s good for me?” “THAT’S MY OPINIOOONNNNN!!” vine. THAT SAID I love him so much.. he held up the mouse to his face! And smiled!! mon dieu.. when he made bird jokes to make adam laugh… “am I in your dreams?” AH! In a way, blue and gansey are sons of the same gun: I love them both but there could be more done with them tbh. But I have a lot of fun with Fansey, a.k.a: fatima gansey. Kind of like fanon gansey except no one’s opinion matters besides mine <3 (basically it’s the *aggressively kicks off shoes* “yee haw”, parts of gansey, and then me giving him the arc he deserves) maybe we could sum it up to “ma’am that’s my emotional support projection character” but like. That’s my business.

ADAM! Previous endorsements include: “might fuck around and become an adam parrish stan account.” “I’ve only had adam for a day and a half but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.” “I go :D whenever I see it’s an adam chapter” (these are more or less verbatim from my previous posts.) that said, I don’t have many fully formed thoughts because I uhhh don’t remember the books that well and also I repress the adam chapters bc they hit too close oops :). tbh I don’t have many complaints at all heh. That’s not to say he doesn’t have flaws but a) I will excuse them because he’s justified, adam does anything problematique and I’m like he can have a little murder. As a treat. and b) I genuinely loved his arc so. No complaints for real!! Also.. adam realising he is capable of loving and being loved…. *kermit meme* I have nearly teared up while writing this. :( one more half baked thought: trc having being “known” as a mark of being loved but then adam being like “i am unknowable” and then there was a moment of him with ronan like “how foolish of him to think he was unknowable”.... *kermit hearts meme intensifies*

RONAN O CLOCK to be honest. I. don’t have any meta or complaints I just love him. I love him a LOT okay.. very much. Big love. Sharp edges tough guy but he names his dream animals chainsaw and gasoline and has a pooping blanket for chainsaw… I can’t remember the quote but that but in cdth where he was like the point is dreamer or not if people are going to get hurt I’m going to stop it… Much to think about. HIS GROWTH. IN THE DREAM THIEVES wow can you believe I read him in TRB and was like ‘I don’t care for him’ ddhfjdhf and then in the dream thieves I’m like.. I have rescinded all previous callouts of ronan lynch. Oops. HE LOVES HIS FRIENDS SO MUCH oh my gosh. Ronan just… he has so much range for feeling!! he feels so much!!! I love that about him so much omg

Henry. Ah. This is where we get kind of controversial jdhjdfh I’m sorry but. I’m going to be honest I like him well enough as a character but I don’t care for him much I’m sorry I just. It’s because he was introduced so late. And only became an important character towards like.. the last half of TRK? I mean, I’d have loved him if he was introduced earlier, hell at least have him come into play in BLLB. The issues I have with him isn’t because of anything about him as a character though, I think it’s all about the way he was handled. I think because he came in so late, there just wasn’t enough time to do justice to the depth that he had, or give him an arc or anything, or enough time to connect with him. Also a part of me feels like he was in there just to kind of tie up Blue and Gansey’s stories and give them something to do after the end of TRK (which sucks because like… making your only canon POC being primarily to develop/give your white characters storylines… (blue isn’t white in my mind but like she was written “colorblind” and when that happens it usually means the author viewed them as white at least in the beginning jhfhgfj. but i don’t remember it too well so if i’m wrong lmk please!)). But probably my biggest problem is: I couldn’t help get the vibe that MS was facing criticism for the lack of diversity and so decided to bring in an asian character. Like, I feel that way bc he came in so late, and because of that he was so half-baked I’m.. gah. GAH. That’s unfair maybe henry is a cool dude hdhfg but I just can’t warm up to him because of this :/

Group dynamics!! With the gangsey I have to *sobs* I love them so much I’m.. what a strange constellation they all were <3

blue and ronan!! BROnan amirite… omg. That moment when blue nearly slips and ronan immediately catches n holds on to her… she would have to remember that :( sons of the same gun. Best friends!

Blue and adam.. gah. As friends it really goes hard. Get you someone who will stab you if you fall too deep into the nether-realm <3 but uhh. As dates. YIKES. Blue really just. Kissed noah while dating him. And didn’t even think for a second “I have a bf” :( not very cool of her to tell gansey about the kiss curse but not telling adam which I mean, I know that happened to show that they weren’t a good match but. Still yikes. Blue was lowkey cheating on adam the whole time during tdt huh :( also bro I am number one stan of the “I wish you could be kissed jane” scene but it happened literally RIGHT AFTER she broke up with adam I’m. relax <3. I wish that was kind of addressed but meh, overall it doesn’t bother me too much. I think they’re great friends :)

Ronan and adam… I can’t talk about it too much. I really can’t!! I really really can’t! the fact that adam goes to gansey like what is love and gansey is like she makes me quiet… and then adam is like “he was so still inside”.. :( omg the bit during trb when ronan is going on a swearing tirade and adam is like “they didn’t start making the civic until ‘73 <3” what a JACKASS I love him. Second secret!! --okay! Wait I have to say: while this one is not really a big deal compared to all their other moments, my favourite quote is “ and he realised that while he’d been looking at ronan, ronan had been looking at him” :uwu face:

Blue and gansey: :3 :33333 maybe it’s the muslim but I really like the tragedy of not being able to kiss :( I would beg just one off you! Under all this! Maybe I’m crying because of the inherent romantic-ness of the night sky with all its stars and late night drives :( wow I love them. Also i know most people find it annoying but I personally love the “I’m never gonna fall for this person” *fast forward to getting to know each other* “ahahah. :) I have rescinded all callouts of ____. she is now my girlfriend (long story)” (not to be confused with enemies to lovers <3 (not to be confused with enemies to friends to lovers <3)) also they can kiss now thank you very much.

Okay I will just preface this with: gansey’s relationships with both ronan and adam have the “how do you know what’s good for me” element to them so I don’t have to address it later hdfgjlfj but bro they love each other so much I’m… “dream me the world… something new for ever night” you’re leaving for TWO DAYS.. gansey gave up monmouth omg what became of that I really forgot khffhk did he get it back. I don’t even need to elaborate on ronan, “ronan would do anything for gansey” :(

ADAM AND GANSEY I been WAITNG for this one! Turn it up! Bro if you saw the whole face I made when I realised it was time for this kdhfhfkhu this is so loaded despite the fact that I cant articulate it <3 the.. idk what to call them. Parallels? Foils? I didn’t take lit sorry but he RANGE we could have had there… remember when gansey was shocked in trk bc :0 you guys came with me and also “they had run for him”. bro their whole relationship had so much. Tension because of their different backgrounds and fundamentally different outlooks because of their backgrounds, and I think if we had seen them properly connect then both of them could have grown from that. I know we see adam understanding gansey a bit better I don’t remember when that happened but I know it did at some point hhdsf but gansey.. never does! Huff and puff. It’s really so FRUSTRATING to me bc that could have key development for gansey but also for adam and gansey’s relationship. And also I feel like we didn’t.. see them try either? Which is so frustrating like idk if it’s a fault on stiefvater’s part or just with YA lit in general that platonic relationships are kind of ignored. Or maybe it’s because idk I remember ms saying she had a lot of issues while writing trk.. but still. We could have really had it all but instead I have to live with “don’t break him adam” I’m (: ok but now I must lighten the mood hjsdhf so might I add: when one of them sees the principal in his crazy funky junky hat and goes “yee haw”… when gansey is like :DDD hey ADAM guess WHAT and adam is like ? and gansey is like oh it was a fully casual problem with the ALTERNATOR of my car of COURSE it was the alternator, it was really simple and I fixed it with much ease :D and adam is like :’D felt like the had hatched a baby bird.. my uwus. ADAM! give me an idea! ALSO if anyone will allow me to venture into adansey territory…. the fact that adam is cabeswater’s magician and gansey now.. is cabeswater in a way. MUCH to think about. I still spend a lot of time thinking about the dryad au the problem is I have never been to progress past the “vague concept” stage of stories and this is why I don’t write dhfjhfdhf. But yes. I think about it often :3

i also like the henry with the gang, i think it could work really well but once again it wasn’t given the time for me to really see it :( also. ronan being racist. and adam laughing along with that. why was that included, ms turn on your location i just wanna talk

okay once again thank you for enabling me claire and i’m so sorry for this monster dsjkhfjkdhg

#aha. am i more than you bargained for yet <3 #claire tag #asks #mutuals #anyway if for some reason you ever wanted a comprehensive guide on my thoughts on the trc characters here it is <3 #though it's not really comprehensive kjhdsjkhfg #when i reread trc. and remember it this time. then you will know #anyway this took me three weeks sdhfkjdfh sorry

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pigeoncentric · 4 years

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i did an A:TLA rewatch and took notes because that’s just what i do, and here’s the notes if anyone wants to see my thoughts

i haven't watched atla since about a year before korra started airing, so like, around 2011. i should also mention that i never watched korra through to the end, but i guess i'll do that after this. if i feel like it. i do know that the biggest bottles were never popped

i have such a clear memory of the first episode. it must've been on nickelodeon pretty often, even though when it was airing, i only watched it occasionally. i remember they also aired the library episode super often.

aang's voice is so tiny and sweet

i gotta turn off my dumb adult brain and put my dumb kid brain back on so i can better appreciate the nickelodeonness of it all

sokka and zuko's first interaction.......

zuko's intimidating approach and then his tiny teen voice

SOKKA AND ZUKO'S SECOND INTERACTION............

zuko's like "i'm going home." with aang. he must be feeling an incredible mixture of feelings, thinking he has the avatar and can reclaim his Honor. but he also must be terrified to go back, and in disbelief... fortunately he's not going home like he said and there are even more confused feelings in between

i just remembered that iroh's voice actor dies between seasons :(

thinking a lot about dante basco... no thoughts in particular, just a lot of them... and how he shipped zutara lmao

"my troubles cannot be soaked away!"

hei bai looks like a ben 10

mounts list (added to as i progressed through the series): zuko's rhinos. earth armored ostriches. metal noshing mole. north pole goatyak. azula and friends' fur geckos. sabertooth moose lion if you're not a wimp. appa-sized beetle. moose with aquatic features. Eel Hound.

you can't out-mom-friend katara. even when she's yelling and being reckless

it's true... airbenders are weak to nets.

the n*tfli* captions are making several mistakes. eat my ass ne*f*ix and hire me to do flawless captioning instead you dumb fucks

YEAH! even by episode 13 in season 1 we already know zuko is a good boy! well also by episode 12. and earlier. well i've seen the series before.

i've just learned that zach tyler eisen is the voice of aang and i have to give him huge props for having the perfect voice. i pay a lot of attention to voice acting, usually in a nitpicky way, and i've never heard an english voice actor whose voice is perfect on the level of ikue ohtani... and when he was like 12 years old. incredible. i'm not being remotely sarcastic

i gotta be 100% honest. i had completely forgotten the existence of zhao and that he's actually a pretty important character, at least in season 1. also his voice actor is pretty good. generally the voice acting is good in this show, and i'm picky.

god the animation where aang makes one catapult catapult the other is so good. also appa just picked up and grabbed a guy. with his fist. wait how many toes does appa have? is that 18 in total? also appa has scutes on his ventrum. anyway i love that appa can pick up and grab a guy but generally chooses not to. gives it more weight when he does choose to

zuko tells turtle seals to be quiet and then touches them unkindly :(

zuko busted out of katara's ice orb instead of melting it :\

zuko put his hood up like iroh told him to but aang just has his naked bald head in the snowy cold :(

seeing zhao grab and bag the moon spirit fish made me feel sick. such a foul act

god. the quality rope. i noticed sokka mention it and was like, "was this a chekhov's gun or a red herring" and then a few minutes later there was a pointed pan over to the quality rope.

anyway examining the quality of the voice acting here leads me to a thesis i might gather evidence to prove: american english voice acting for cartoons is far higher quality than american english voice acting for anime dubs. or is that just something obvious that everyone already agrees on

anyway anyway, the episode ended without the quality rope being put to use. unless i missed it, which is entirely possible.

jesus i heard azula's first lines and got an instant flashback to all the tumblr drama about grey delisle and her tumblr account and how she pretended it wasn't hers or something let's just erase all of this from my brain right now

this is kind of out of nowhere and borderline inappropriate but i'm glad characters in avatar are illustrated with nipples when they're shirtless... it always disturbs me a tiny bit when shirtless characters are depicted with zero nipple, not even a hint of nipple. (Aladdin.) not just because it implicitly stigmatizes something everyone has, but also because this scenario always plays in my head where it's like, a little kid sees a cartoon character without nipples and they think, "so i'm not supposed to have these..." and they start feeling weird and bad about themself... all you need to depict a nipple is a single unobtrusive dot. nothing visually offensive or explicit about it.

even to an audience who doesn't understand any cultural context, you can't not see the significance of zuko and iroh cutting off their topknots...

fandom seems to see sokka as the silliest one when in fact at least 40% of his entire role as a character is to be the tsukkomi

underrated moment: "you've got an elbow leech." "WHERE?! WHERE?!"

zuko should be a good boy and only steal if it's from pirates

stealy zuko stealing money and buying iroh a teapot !

god i forgot what a tiny baby voice toph has... so tiny

zuko trying really really hard but doing a bad job hammering (tears)

azula set up zuko and mai for a lucky sukebe...

when zuko's mom told him not to forget who he is, she didn't mean to remember that he's a prince and an heir as he revealed to the unsuspecting earth kingdom village. she meant to remember that he's someone with at least the base level of empathy and compassion, unlike most of his immediate family...

i still think aang's voice actor did a great job but i bet it sucks to be a young boy doing an excellent young boy voice and then when you grow up a little and presumably experience some puberty you just Cannot do the young boy voice anymore. hopefully in most cases where that happens, it's at least not abrupt

placing a bet that the writer for episode s2:e10 (the library) is different than most of the other episodes. i don't like it very much, at least in the first several minutes. if it's a name i recognize from the credits of several other episodes, i might be a bit disappointed in them. seriously, there's one stinker after another. and with such a great concept of an episode...

i didn't recognize the name of the guy who wrote this episode so i thought i was right but no, he wrote a bunch of episodes. must have been off his game for this one... either that or i'm in a very unforgiving mood and don't realize it... also when i went on wikipedia to look at who wrote which atla episodes, i learned that the animation for the show was split between two animation studios, and they're both korean. ah, i guess that doesn't mean all the animation took place overseas, as DM movie has a headquarters in the US. according to wikipedia.

oh, they're BUZZards... i get it... i gotcha.

aang with a vengeance is both scary and sad to see. but he does understand that property damage is nothing compared to a life

people who love azula are the exact same as people who love vriska: [comment redacted]

they have american birds in the avatar world. i keep hearing an eastern wood-peewee going "pee-pee-uwee" in the background :3

the serpent's pass seems geologically implausible.

sokka should really get face paint all over his face when he kisses suki. or like, the cartoonish image of when someone is covered in lipstick lip smacks, but it should be suki's makeup color

appa's been through so much and now he has to meet a boarcupine?!?! fortunately he still knows how to pick up and grab... but still :(

he touched appa's scutes and read them like a palm...

longshot translated his meaningful stares into out-loud words for katara and friends

zuko forgot that azula always lies :(

zuko should know that being redeemed in his father's eyes is the opposite of what he wants...

i LOVE aang's passionate tsungi horn dance

there are spring peepers in the fire nation

god the dripping of the rotten clams is so excessive

you know how ultrasonic humidifiers can create water vapor without heating it into steam, by vibrating it super fast? let's try that with waterbending, it'll be cool

two different bad guys have been skipped across the water like a rock

i love the fake time lapse of cleaning the river... and it showed how with pollution in real life, stopping the source of the pollution is not enough. it needs to be removed as well

sokka deserves LOTS of credit just for being able to handle a boomerang.

GOD THE SLOW PAN OVER THE BEAUTIFUL SWORD (in 3:4)

sokka also deserves LOTS of credit for being able to admit he doesn't know everything.

i managed to forget that zuko turns his back on iroh, while remembering that at some point, iroh gets buff

the voice of sokka's master is the voice of the boulder. right? right? no? are you kidding me? i suck at this

seems like kissing azula would have immediate consequences, like something melting

zuko is poorly socialized

zuko still forgot that azula always lies. even when she's being somewhat humanized in an episode like this.

so avatar roku had earthly attachments he did not let go of, presumably. such as his wife. did he have unfettered access to the avatar state? that's what i would ask him during this expositionfest if i was aang.

so sozin could do heatbending... that's amazing. i think i missed that the first time around.

that's right, zuko came back and his hair is long enough, but he hasn't recreated his topknot.

hawky is the only atla animal that poops on camera.

if you're gonna bend sweat, you might as well bend spit, and it's a little easier to obtain

wait so... is combustion man also a heatbender? i'll have to look into it later. [looked into it later: the avatar wiki has termed it "combustionbending?" are you shitting me?]

ooh it's the bloodbending episode! i'm pumped.

someone made a post about how when they watched this show and they were a kid they were thinking about how the characters are hot, and now they're watching as an adult and the characters are all tiny children... that's how i've been feeling. also season 3 episode 8 aang's voice sounds a little bit pubertous.

anyway damn this bloodbending episode is outright traumatic. good shit

oh, now zuko's topknot is back.

appa's armor covers each individual toe <:3c

i seriously misremembered the course of zuko's character development. and the timeline of the invasion in general. but now i understand that zuko has to tell his dad to eat shit face to face.

watching zuko's "zuko here" practice speech hurts 100% as much as it did the first time i saw it. and when he's delivering it to the gaang it's impossible to watch. i didn't put my hands on my head-- they just went there unbidden.

i kinda can't help picturing dante basco's face every time i hear zuko talk. the whole time. it's sometimes not optimal to know the faces of voice actors. especially when you're like me and you're not good at pushing out unwanted mental images.

what the fuck, combustion man? he just loves assassination so much you can't take back any orders. also i can't help but imagine that if you put a slice across his third eye his combustion would be fully inhibited. well i guess that's not a problem anymore.

i like that the gaang are a variety of heights, and that they're all noticeably shorter than most of the adults they meet. it just makes it feel realistic

if it was a US max security prison and prisoners were escaping they'd probably just fucking murder them

i love how when mai starts up the gondola again and azula is like "what is she DOING!" and ty lee just makes an "iunno" noise

tfw your best friend abandons you because you wouldn't let her murder her own brother

chit seng didn't get to free his girlfriend and best buddy :(

funny how azula seems almost docile when she's getting everything she wants. typical narcissist. well ok not the least bit typical.

sokka ate the rose. i remembered this scene Too clearly. but i didn't remember that.

um... was that the full moon? when katara bloodbent that guy? i should've looked at the sky... i went back and looked and still didn't see if it was the full moon. maybe the wiki knows. i don't care enough to look it up properly.

i was wondering when the melon lord would show up

none of the teens understand the obvious solution of defeating the fire lord by beating him INTO SUBMISSION (or oblivion) instead of killing him. just like in every anime fight ever. it's over when you acknowledge you've lost or you can't fight anymore, not when you die. (for the #1 best example of ending a fight the right way, see the way luffy defeats crocodile.)

so i know aang's gonna defeat the fire lord by essentially hitting him with a forced purification beam to the face and make him realize the errors of his ways or something. the fun part is how we get there

bumi bending entire houses through the air

aw i forgot the turtle island didn't have a cute face.

jyong jyong firebent a jet platform to fly around on?!

i guess the firelord can fly around like bakugou katsuki

i forgot that aang took away his firebending... and sokka hops up to him like "well, look at you, buster"

i'm glad i decided to watch this again. even if i didn't do a great job paying attention tbh. well i did spend a bit of time carving a little wooden spoon while i was watching. anyway i was thinking i wouldn't move right on to korra but rather read some of the atla comics that i know exist but have never read whatsoever. i wonder if i can find them in some kind of library...

i found the comics illegally on the internet and read a whole bunch (up until the end of the "zuko finds his mom" arc). i didn't write my thoughts down as i was reading, so i don't remember them. that's how my worthless brain works. i do remember that i found the comics satisfactory as an accurate extension of the show, and that i feel ambivalent about how azula is written/treated in the comics.

i don’t know if i feel like rewatching korra yet.

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not-a-space-alien · 7 years

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Your Own Side Outtake #5: Be Sure to Like, Comment, And Subscribe If You Want To See More

Rating: G

Series masterpost

On AO3

Adramelech was gaining weight.

Sylvia could not figure out why. It was one of the many things she had noticed about her demonic companion since they had moved in together.

Back up a little. Sylvia and Adramelech had moved in together. It was a relatively recent development, one that Sylvia had mixed feelings about.

Sylvia herself had been the one to suggest it, saying that they could save money by sharing a flat, and she regretted it as soon as Adramelech accepted. Because now she had to confront her feelings, which didn’t make much sense to her.

Sure, Adramelech loved her, but he loved her in the same way that he loved their dog Paprika and his friend Aziraphale. He loved a lot of things. He was just kind of that way. And Sylvia was starting to think that maybe she loved Adramelech, but not in the same way that she loved their dog Paprika.

Which was something she was not pleased to have to suddenly start wrestling with herself about. Because even if she made up her mind, she was sure Adramelech would not reciprocate her feelings. And now she had to stand seeing him every morning with his hair mussed up from sleep, sleepily padding into the kitchen and offering to cook her breakfast…

They had separate bedrooms. Adramelech had not seemed to care either way, but Sylvia had insisted on that point. It was a good thing they had gone that route, though, because their flat also came with two bathrooms, and another thing she had discovered about her companion was that he spent at least three solid hours in the bathroom each day, if not more.

Usually one solid hour of that was luxuriating in the bathtub. He came home every week with different concoctions for the bath, one of which was, alarmingly, named a bomb. When she saw what color the bathtub was after the water had drained, she understood the name.

And then there was the hair and makeup. Adramelech had an entire closet full of things that looked like torture instruments for beating his hair into shape. He had a flat iron for when it was too curly, and when it was too flat, he had a curling iron. He had shampoos and sprays to make it less volumous when it took up too much space, and when it didn’t take up enough, he had volumising shampoos and sprays to make it take up more. And his beard. He had a kit the size of a toolbox full of scissors and tweezers and trimmers of every conceivable shape and size for his facial hair. Sometimes he spent an hour meticulously plucking his eyebrows out, only to draw them back on with what looked like a pencil. He bought makeup that was the exact same shade of brown as his skin tone and put it all over his face before beginning any of his makeup, and his face always looked exactly the same with or without it.

There was so much makeup. Sylvia wanted to suggest to him to start buying it in gallon drums instead of those tiny palettes the store gave him.

And the most amazing thing to Sylvia was that Adramelech did not grow bored of it, ever. Each new compact case was met with the same enthusiasm as the last few thousand. Each new eyeshadow had endless possibilities. And sometimes when he was upset, he could go buy a new and exciting color and feel better. Sometimes Sylvia could tell the difference between it and the colors he already had, and sometimes she could not.

It was baffling to her. For a while after she had been incorporated, Sylvia had been afraid to try any of these aspects of making up one’s appearance because she thought it would be considered vanity. But she had gotten over it eventually, and had tried putting on makeup and shaving her legs, and she hadn’t liked it at all. She stuck to simpler trappings from then on.

Sometimes Adramelech even sat in front of the computer, recording himself putting on makeup and narrating what he was doing as though he were explaining it to someone else. That part she did not understand most of all, but Adramelech had always been a bit….strange, so she did not bother him about it.

“Come on!” Sylvia would shout, banging on the bathroom door a few minutes after they had been scheduled to leave for some event. “We’re going to be late!” And Adramelech would always say he wasn’t done with some aspect of his preening routine, which he estimated would take another five minutes and invariably took at least fifteen.

Sylva had simply gotten into the habit of telling him they had to leave about half an hour earlier than they actually did, which usually got them there on time.

But back to the first thing. Adramelech had been gaining weight, and Sylvia could not imagine why. He ate like…well, like a bird. Sylvia was not sure to exactly what extent a demon’s eating habits correlated with the feeding habits of their animal form, but she had never seen Crowley swallow a mouse or Maltha begin to peck at birdseed, so she had no way of knowing. But Adramelech had always eaten very lightly and consequently had always been rather skinny.

One day she could hear Adramelech getting upset about how his favourite pair of purple jeans no longer fit him, and she offered to take him clothes shopping, which she regretted after it ended up taking about six hours. He fretted about how he had gone up a pants size.

“That’s no big deal,” Sylvia told him. “Goodness knows we don’t have to worry about our health. And it’s not like you’re the only one. You’re still much smaller than Aziraphale.”

Adramelech did not seem convinced, saying it was all well and good when Aziraphale was fat, but Adramelech had a different image to maintain.

“For whom?” said Sylvia incredulously. “Adra, don’t worry about it.”

Sylvia would find her answers soon enough, but not in the way she expected.

It happened one day when Adramelech was doing that strange thing, talking to his computer while putting on makeup. When Sylvia brought him a mug of lemonade, he pulled her into view of the screen and said excitedly, “Hey, everyone look who it is! It’s Sylvia!”

“Adramelech, who are you talking to?” said Sylvia, a bit alarmed.

“Oh, I can edit you out if you don’t want to be in the video,” said Adramelech, beginning to brush some of his foundation onto Sylvia’s face. She scrunched up under the attempts at beautification, sipping her own lemonade in between strokes.

“You’re making a video?”

“Yes. I’m showing everyone how to blend this new highlighter I just got.”

She looked down at the smattering of makeup on the table. “…and why are you doing that?” she said, feeling completely lost.

Adramelech blushed. “Er. To inspire vanity.”

“Vanity?”

“Vanity is my favourite mortal sin.”

"...Mm-hmm.” She took another sip. “And who exactly are you showing? Who is ‘everyone’?”

“My Instagram followers, mostly,” said Adramelech. “Although my YouTube channel has been getting more subscribers.”

“People go online just to watch you do your makeup?”

“You’d be surprised how humans eat it up. One of my Instagram posts was shared to tumblr and it’s got over ten thousand notes.”

A few rapid clicks pulled up a blue website on his screen. Sylvia looked at it without understanding much.

“This person called you their ‘gender-nonconforming husband,’” said Sylvia. “You’re not really married to them, are you?”

“I’ve never met her, actually. And I’m not really sure what that word means.”

“Adramelech, how many of these videos have you made?” said Sylvia, taking control of the mouse and scrolling down his YouTube page.

“I make one every week,” said Adramelech.

“…all right,” said Sylvia. “And people go online to watch them?”

“Yes.”

“But why do you put them up? Just for fun?”

“Vanity.”

“Adramelech, I’ve never seen you put this much work into anything. That can’t be the only reason.”

“Well, I do get paid…”

“What? How? YouTube is free, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but there’s ad revenue.”

“How much?”

“Ummm….”

“How much?”

Adramelech pulled up his bank account and showed her.

“Adramelech! Every time I go to pay the electric bill you tell me you don’t have any money! What are you spending this all on?”

“Er, well, some of it is for more makeup, and some on stuff for the bath…”

“And the rest of it…?”

“Look, have you ever been to Lush?” said Adramelech. “That stuff isn’t cheap.”

“Adramelech! There’s no way you spent all of this on cosmetics!”

“All right,” said Adramelech, sorrowfully. “You caught me. I didn’t spend it all on cosmetics.”

“What?” said Sylvia. “Then on what?”

He shame-facedly evacuated the computer chair and led her into his bedroom.

“Please don’t judge me, Sylvia,” he said, weeping. “This is so embarrassing.”

“What?” said Sylvia, growing alarmed. “What is it?”

Adramelech put his hand on the knob to his closet. “You don’t understand what it’s like being a demon. You get…urges!”

“Urges?” said Sylvia. “Adramelech, I swear to God, what have you got in this closet?”

Adramelech chickened out at the last second. Sylvia wrestled past him to pull the closet open.

A cascade of plastic sacks came tumbling out, falling over each other with a rattling noise.

Sylvia blinked at what had come out of the closet. “Is this… birdseed?”

Adramelech wrung his hands.

“You were hiding fifty kilos of birdseed in the closet because you didn’t want me to see you eating it?”

Adramelech dramatically threw his hands over his face and fell backwards into the plastic sacks, sprawling out among them. “It’s not even the healthy kind!” he sobbed. “It’s the kind they tell you not to feed to ducks because it’ll make them overweight. It’s just so good!”

Sylvia’s face turned red as she suppressed a laugh. Adramelech’s feathers flared out. “It’s not funny, Sylvia! I know I have a problem!”

“The only problem is that you won’t help me pay the electric bill,” said Sylvia. “Come on, Adra. Stop being so melodramatic. I don’t care if you eat birdseed.”

“Really?” Adramelech sniffled.

“Of course. It’s going to take a little more than that to drive me off. You’re stuck with me, weirdo.”

Adramelech brightened. “I can always count on you, Sylvia.”

#good omens #my writing #my good omens fanfic

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