It comes for her, as it came for her husband, so many years ago. It comes for her, as it came for her Headmaster, the price of his ambition. It comes for her, as it came for far too many of her friends and students, in one war then another.
Death comes for her.
Minerva McGonagall Looks at Death, and raises an eyebrow.
Death pauses, then nods and backs away. “We’ll call this number three then, shall we?”
She smiles as she turns back to her paperwork. There is a reason her animagus form is a cat.
Aziraphale had learned a dance called “the gavotte” in a discreet gentlemen’s club in Portland Place in the late 1880s. After a while, he had become fairly good at it, and was quite put out when, some decades later, the gavotte went out of style for good.
Somehow, the lack of buzz about this makes me think that no one checked what gavotte was (is?). It’s a pheasant KISSING dance where partners exchange kisses at the end. That he learned at A DISCREET GENTLEMEN’S CLUB.
WHY is no one talking about this at all?
WAIT WHAT
… this is one of those things I just assume everyone knows.
Me trying to explain to someone that doesn’t have Visual Snow about the static that covers everything I see.
Here’s a gif to demonstrate.
Imagine that, overlayed over your entire field of vision. Even when your eyes are closed. (especially when your eyes are closed.)
*looks up from computer* now wait just one minute
This is a real thing that exists, not intrusive thought. This is the reason I have glasses. I was a little kid, thought it was normal, tried to point them out to my mom, and she freaked out and brought me to an eye doctor. Where we found out I have shit eyesight. And also apparently where she learned what visual snow was.
But. She deicded. Not. To tell me.
(Like she’s also decided not to tell me or my twin that we’re autistic)
So it literally took me more than a decade to find a word for this.
Which is why I made this post.
She mentioned casually last year to her boyfriend that she learned I had visual snow when I was little and I’m jyst sitting there, having already painstakingly figured all of this out on my own like, “and you didn’t think that was worth explaining to me even when I brought it to your atfention?????”
So ueah.
It’s a thing. If you see staticy moving dots everywhere even with your eyes closed, you’ve got Visual Snow.
I HAVE THIS!!~~ I tried asking my teacher in grade 2 what they were, and she just told me to drink water. Never went away. Wasn’t even studied until like 2013 or something. Sorta fun, mostly irritating!
i have this too! no one explained it to me i just found out from a fuckinf sixpenceee post like a fool.
i just thought EVERYONE had static and floaters in their vision. and that afterimages were that bad for everyone.
like even if im not looking into a bright light or my eyes pass over something slightly bright i get afterimages that can be blinding. when i close my eyes i always have after images of anything reflecting even a little light. i didnt realize that was part of visual snow until last year
here’s some more symptoms for anyone curious if they have this:
RDJ: And I believe I ever remember telling you this, that what we needed was a suit of armor around the world! Remember that? Whether it impacted our precious freedoms or not, that’s what we needed. I said we’d lose. You said, “We’ll do that together too.” Well, guess what, Cap? We lost, and you weren’t there. But that’s what we do, right? Our best work after the fact? We’re the Avengers? We’re the Avengers. Not the Prevengers, right?[Carol]’s great, by the way. We need you. You’re new blood.Bunch of tired old wheels. I got nothing for you, Cap. I’ve got no coordinates, no clues, no strategies, no options. Zero, zip, nada.
I’d just like to add, see how they behave when they’re angry/frustrated/exhausted, and if you see something that concerns you, wait until they’re calm, and then talk to them about it.
My husband used to yell when he got frustrated, but after I explained to him that I found it upsetting, he stopped yelling and started consciously working on asking for help before he got to that level of frustration.
When I’m upset over something, or just in a bad mood, I tend to withdraw. My husband explained to me that it makes him feel like I’m mad at him, so now when I need some space, I’ll tell him what I’m upset about, or that I’m in a bad mood for no particular reason, and I need to be alone for a little while.
See your friends and partners at their worst, but don’t assume that their worst is immutable. If someone loves and cares about you, they’ll try to accommodate you to the best of their ability.
^^^^ This is the best advice I’ve ever seen on this site, and it is so important. Communication is everything, and is 80% of the reason my husband and I have such a healthy, strong, and supportive relationship.
we all talk about az being out of touch w technology but what about crowley. when does mr. “crowley automatically assumed all vehicles he drove would have cassette players and therefore this one did” “he forgot abt speakers so his sound system just works perfectly without them” find out no one uses cassette tapes anymore. when does he find out fax machines are obsolete. does he know what body wash is, bc he doesn’t need to shower and he doesn’t go to the grocery store. has he ever seen a granola bar. does he know about automatic transmissions. if crowley hadn’t invented fruit roll-ups i don’t think he would know what they were. there are unplumbed depths here. crowley doesn’t interact with the world like a human any more than aziraphale does and i think we may have forgotten that
It’s also a huge and hilarious plot-point that Crowley’s computer is showy, but doesn’t do much, whereas Aziraphale’s is an outright fossil, but very functional. And he uses it to keep all those scrupulous tax records in which nobody can prove he’s getting away with murder somewhere.
y’all realize this means that aziraphale is canonically 99x better with computers than crowley. aziraphale keeps incredibly detailed tax records on a computer in the 80s. do you know what computer was the most popular – particularly for financial records – in the 1980s? the IBM personal computer.
this thing ran a text-only operating system. the screen couldn’t display any images unless they were ASCII (like the logo shown above). the first iterations didn’t even have a multicolor display – just the standard green on white text you see in retro vaporwave shit.
to use a text-based operating system, you need to know virtually every command you could conceivably need to run in order to do what you need to do. need to open a file? first you need to locate it. you need to type the right command to move to the right directory and then you need to type the right command to open it in a text editor or viewer. you need to either know all these commands, or (in 1983) have them written down in a goddamn book and look them up one by one.
in other words, most people even now wouldn’t have the first idea how to take a crack at one of these motherfuckers.
and of all people, aziraphale can use one – not only reasonably, but well enough to keep tax records SO DETAILED that the IRS DOESN’T BELIEVE THEY ARE REAL.
and crowley’s computer doesn’t do anything. because he doesn’t know how to use it. sure, he’d be able to use windows 10 today with some instruction (what the hell is a mouse for, anyway?) but aziraphale would almost certainly be able to read the error codes the damn thing spits out when crowley inevitably breaks something
Crowley: angel, help me, I need to find a new pair of cool leather jacket online, my last one just caught on fire.
Aziraphale with hacker voice: Leave it to me
agreed, but this is because when Aziraphale inputs a command, the computer always does exactly what he expected it to do.
Aziraphale talks to his computer like he’s talking to a person By this point his computer is probably a person
He types “show me the picture I took last saturday of a duck” and the computer’s like “you took two pictures of ducks last saturday, here they are.” and ignores the pictures of geese and robins with no tagging required
input: Play that one of Crowley’s cursed bebops I have lodged in my head, please.
input: It goes do do do do do do do.
output:
despite being equipped with a sound system only capable of generating motherboard emergency beeps, somehow a full orchestral & choral cover rendition of Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls that had not previously existed
me at 14: wow, protagonists in media my age! how relateable!
me at 28: WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CHILD SOLDIERS? WHERE ARE ALL THE ADULTS? WHO LET THIS HAPPEN AND WHY ARE THEY NOT BEING PROSECUTED BY LAW WITHIN THESE FICTIONAL UNIVERSES
In the same vein:
Me at 14: oh protagonists that are 17-20-ish, they’re basically adults, right?
Me at 28: Oh my Gods you’re babies who left you in charge?!
Ariel: Daddy, I love him! Me at 14: Yeah, girl, you tell him! Me at 30:
Marnie in Halloweentown: I’m thirteen, okay? I’m practically grown up! I’m certainly old enough to make my own choices – right?
Me at 7: Right!
Me at 13: Right! …Well, okay, maybe not practically grown up, but still, right!
Me at 28:
You either die young or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
This is so true
Me as teenager: Yeah, girl, you hook up with that older guy, this is super hot!
Me as an adult: all of these men should be arrested
Me age 24 re-reading Harry Potter
This, a thousand times this.
GOD, that last gif is so accurate. that’s the best way to describe this feeling.
