A fool for lesser things

tripfeldthemystic:

How a lot of RPers and fanfiction writers portray Aziraphale as this very innocent, perpetually-flustered, rather scatterbrained, fairly naive and quite harmless person.

It’s interesting because I think people tend to forget Aziraphale’s transformation, which has taken place in the time between Eden and modern-day. He’s spent 6000 years in the company of the Serpent of Eden, and the novel actually states that he’s been a bit corrupted by it. And it’s visible. Given how he acts in the prologue, and the way he occasionally acts around Crowley, it’s easy to forget that he’s really not an overly compassionate or innocent character.

Keep in mind this is the guy who pretty freely windexes peoples’ brains when they get too near his precious bookshop, who tried to fly under Heaven’s radar even while being watched by the Metatron, who tried to take on Satan with a sword, who gets drunk with his demon best friend and often scolds him into doing the right thing. He does “bad” things as long as he can justify it to himself; he knows how to bend the rules. He’s kind of a sneaky bastard in a lot of ways. He’s somewhat sassy and not at all innocent, even though he seems to try to cultivate the image of still being a textbook angel.

Just because he’s clueless about fashion and says things like “Oh dear” doesn’t mean he’s especially sweet or nice. Remember Crowley called him “just enough of a bastard to be worth liking.” And this is Crowley saying this. If Crowley calls you a bit of a bastard, it has to be assumed that you really are a bit of a bastard.

He’s very polite, but not necessarily nice. I dare say he’s even a tad jaded.

Did you know I wrote a story for the 2008 Good Omens Exchange?  It’s okay if you didn’t know, since I had forgotten.

More impressively, I still like it.  God, I know.  Weird.  ANYWAY: here it is.

——

There was a woman in Aziraphale’s shop.

It happened sometimes; it was only natural, after all. He ran a business, and occasionally customers would show up, wanting to. . .consume. While this wasn’t as big a problem as it had been before the Armageddon’t—Aziraphale had been making an effort to stock books he could actually sell—he still didn’t really like it. There was a knee-jerk reaction to it that Aziraphale hadn’t quite managed to overcome.

So he fought off the twitch and smiled pleasantly at the woman and informed her he would be happy to help her if she needed anything.¹

Read More

gyzym:

big spoon/little spoon: aziraphale, by and large, chooses not to sleep; he doesn’t particularly understand crowley’s fascination with it, though he tends to write it up to “sloth.” typically this results in crowley asleep across his thighs while he balances a large tome on crowley’s shoulder; when crowley attempts to point out that this its own varient on sloth, arizaphale becomes suddenly, inextricably fascinated with the world passing by out the bentley’s windows. 

favorite non-sexual activity: lunch at the ritz; it used to be the duck pond, but the detective and his friend who keep trying to surveille them are less interesting now they’ve succumbed to their obvious attraction to one another. 

who uses all the hot water in the morning: crowley, typically for the out-and out plant torture he’s lately been forced to resort to. 

what they order from takeout: crowley and aziraphale do not order takeout; the entire point of eating is the full experience of dining out, and if they’re not going to do it right, neither of them sees the point in doing it at all. occasionally, however, one of them will go on a candy binge—who it’s going to be this time is hard to know. 

most trivial thing they fight over: well, that’s a complicated answer. the second most trivial thing they fight over is who originally suggested the Arrangement; crowley insists that aziraphale brought it up first, and aziraphale is equally insistant that the whole thing was crowley’s suggestion. the most trivial thing they fight over is the plants, who have been decidedly more difficult to terrify since aziraphale moved in. crowley is certain that aziraphale has been coddling them and keeps attempting to catch him out at it; every time he does this, aziraphale gets a little more offended.

the truth, however, is that the plants have heard them having that second most trivial argument enough times to recognize it as a slightly more ineffable version of “who picked who up.” it’s kind of hard for them to take crowley seriously, after that.  

who does most of the cleaning: ~miracles~

what has a season pass on their dvr: nothing; the television in crowley’s apartment plays whatever you tell it to, regardless of whether or not it exists. quite a few recordings of live queen performances slip in there, though. 

who controls the netflix queue: did you know! netflix was originally crowley’s idea; he expected the whole “mailing of dvds” concept to go satisfyingly wrong, and has been kind of disappointed. aziraphale got a commendation for it last week, but he’s not planning on mentioning it; crowley will only pout. 

who calls up the super/landlord when the heat’s not working: there’s only one place in the universe where crowley and aziraphale can’t control the temperature, and in that place, the thermostat is always set to Punishing. 

who steals the blankets: crowley. (“cold blood, poor dear,” aziraphale says knowingly to the woman behind them at the newsstand when crowley pulls his scarf a little tighter; to add insult to injury, when crowley narrows his eyes and hisses “angel,” at him, the woman beams at both of them and calls them precious.)

who leaves their stuff around: newt and anathema, wherever they may roam. 

who remembers to buy the milk: crowley’s had a gallon of milk in the fridge for aziraphale’s tea since the 80s. it has never gone bad or run out.

who remembers anniversaries: ah, history, mostly. 

“the thermostat is always set to Punishing”

I WAS DRINKING WATER.

turntechlongbottom:

this is stupid

aziraphale’s most frequently used emoticons (and what he thinks they convey)

• 0:| (I feel unamused by this turn of events, and frankly somewhat concerned.)
• 0:? (This perplexes me.)
• 0:( (How disappointing!)
• 0:C (Well, now I’m very distressed indeed.)
• 0:O (I’m shocked!)
• 0:) (This is a much more pleasent outcome of things. I feel contented.)
• 0:/ (I am unsure of what to make of that…)
• 0:D (Enthusiasm! Note to self: use this one rarely, I believe it looks somewhat… silly.)

aziraphale’s most frequently used emoticons (and what they look like to crowley)

• 0:| (lack of Emotnl Ressponsse?)
• 0:? (he musst have a Sstomach Bug.)
• 0:( (ssad.)
• 0:C (very ssad?)
• 0:O (assuming thiss iss either sstartled or sscared.)
• 0:) (happy i ssuposse.)
• 0:/ (dissapntd or confussed.)
• 0:D (Az, you’re Drunk.

the only emoticon crowley ever uses:

• >B)

what it means:

• really, who the hell even knows? i mean clearly it’s got horns and shades, but beyond that, there is no rhyme nor reason to when and where he puts the damn thing. and it’s expression never changes.
• oh well, there was that one time.

MS: funny if I did the Good Thing + You did the Bad One, eh? >BY

it has been assumed since that the Y was intended to look like a snake’s tongue, but was deemed to look “sstupid” after its initial use, and was thereby dropped. 

as a side note: due to the fact that it is nearly impossible to type “Aziraphale” out without fucking it up somewhere when you’ve got a touchscreen phone (not to mention it takes forever), Crowley generally just calls him Az when they’re communicating textually.

Aziraphale, for his part, has asked Crowley to stop multiple times, as he finds nicknames somewhat inane, but Crowley, being Crowley, simply made fun of him for it, and switched to calling him “THE ANGEL OF THE EASTERN GATE” just like that, in all caps, despite the added hardship it took to type it out each time, for as long as it took for Aziraphale to give in and just let him call him Az.

i love all of you so much right now