Folks let me talk about Crowley and sunglasses, because I have a lot of emotions about when he wears them and when he doesn’t, and Hiding versus Being Seen.
We’re introduced to the concept of Crowley wearing glasses even before we’re introduced to Crowley, by Hastur: “If you ask me he’s been up here too long. Gone native. Enjoying himself too much. Wearing sunglasses even when he doesn’t need them.”
Honestly Crowley’s whole introduction is a fantastic; we learn so much about his character in a tiny amount of time. The fact that he’s late, the Queen playing as the Bentley approaches, the “Hi, guys” in response to Hastur and Ligur’s “Hail Satan”. I like this intro much better than the one originally scripted with the rats at the phone company, but I digress.
Crowley wears sunglasses when he doesn’t need them. Specifically, he still wears them around the demons, and when he’s in hell.
You know where Crowley doesn’t wear glasses? At home.
We never once see him wearing glasses in his flat, except for when he knows Hastur and Ligur are coming. That’s an emotional kick to the gut for me. Here’s one of the only places Crowley’s comfortable enough to be sans glasses, and when he knows it’s going to be invaded he prepares not just physically with the holy water, but by putting up that emotional barrier in a place where he wasn’t supposed to need it.
An argument could be made that Crowley actually never needs glasses. We’re shown that it’s well within the angels’ and demons’ powers to pass unnoticed by humans. Crowley and Aziraphale waltz out of the manor in the middle of a police raid, and going unnoticed by the police takes so little effort that they can keep up a conversation while they stroll through. Even an unimaginative demon like Hastur apparently doesn’t have trouble with the humans losing it over his demonic eyes. The humans in the scene at Megiddo are acting like “this guy is a little weird” and not “holy shit his entire eyeballs are black jelly”
That means that Crowley’s glasses are a choice, just like Aziraphale’s softness. Sure, he could arrange matters so that nobody ever noticed his eyes, but he doesn’t want to. Crowley wants acceptance, and he wants to belong, and he’s never, ever had that. He didn’t fit in before the Fall in Heaven, he doesn’t fit in with the demons in Hell. With the glasses, and with the Bentley and his plants and with the barely-bad-enough-to-be-evil nuisance temptations, he’s choosing Earth. This is where he wants to fit in, perhaps not with the humans, but amongst them.
Even after Crowley is at his absolute lowest, when he thinks Aziraphale’s dead and he’s on his way to drink until the world ends, he takes the time to put a new pair on when the old ones are damaged. He needs that emotional crutch right now, even with everything about to turn into a pile of puddling goo he’s not ready for the world to see his eyes.
Which is why I swore out loud when Hastur forciblytakes them off.
It’s about the worst thing that Hastur could have done. Rather than leading with a physical threat, his first act is to strip away Crowley’s emotional defences. It’s a great writing choice because god it made me hate Hastur, even more than all the physical violence we see him do.
It’s also the moment that Crowley really truly gets his shit together, and focuses all of his considerable imagination on getting to Tadfield and Aziraphale to help save the world. He’s wielding the terrifyingly unimaginable power of someone who’s hit rock bottom and realised it literally could not get any worse than this. He doesn’t put another pair of glasses on after discorporating Hastur, and he spends the majority of the airbase sequence without them.
He puts them back on again, I think, at the moment that he really lets himself hope. When he thinks ‘shit, there may be a real chance that we get through this to a future that I don’t want to lose’.
The vulnerability is back, and he needs Adam to trust him. In Crowley’s mind being accepted by a human means he needs to have his eyes hidden. Someone give the demon a hug, please.
Interestingly, there’s only one time in the whole series that we see Crowley willingly choose to take his glasses off around another person. Only one person he’ll take down that barrier for, and even then he’s drunk before he does it.
Dear God/Satan/Someone that makes my heart ache. Crowley’s chosen Earth, but he’s also chosen Aziraphale. He’s been looking for somewhere to belong his entire existence, and it’s with the angel that he finally feels it.
When the dust settles and the world is saved and they finally have space to be themselves unguarded, I like to imagine Crowley takes off the glasses when it’s just the two of them; the idea of being known doesn’t scare him quite so much anymore.
also OH MY GOD THAT LAST GIF I NEVER NOTICED THE WINK BEFORE?????????
Aziraphale in the paintball scene, though. I mean, seriously, y’all
Look
at
this
absolute
nerd
Especially that last gif! This is an angel that is literally thousands of years old, he helped create the motherfuckin’ universe, and he is p o u t i n g at Crowley over some paint on his jacket that he could EASILY remove himself.
But wait! There’s more!
Not only has Aziraphale already shown Crowley the stain, but Crowley has already circled him to assess the damage for himself.
And yet, after saying, “Well, I would always know the stain was there,” with that little pout, he turns to show Crowley the stain again.
And then! AND THEN!!
He gives Crowley this look.
Do you see the little raise of his eyebrows??? LOOK AGAIN
He could very easily get rid of this stain himself, but he is doing E V E R Y T H I N G in his power to get Crowley to do it for him.
“I could do this myself,” he’s saying, “but I’d rather you do it. You can do it better than me, can’t you? Please? Please, won’t you???”
The funniest part about this, fam, is that we all know Crowley needs very little prompting to actually indulge Aziraphale’s whims. He’s incredibly indulgent, anyways, we see ample evidence of that in Hard Times.
But this…I think (?) this is the first time that we see Aziraphale actively seeking out and trying to manipulate his way into getting one of those acts of service that Crowley so does like to give to him.
Like, sure, back during the Shakespeare scene, Aziraphale gives Crowley that very hopeful, “oh, WILL YOU?” look when Shakespeare mentions needing a miracle for Hamlet, but that is so different from this.
This is Aziraphale KNOWING that Crowley indulges and using that knowledge for his personal gain.
AND CROWLEY GIVES IT TO HIM. HE JUST. DOES.
That is the face of a spoiled angel that has gotten exactly what he wanted–a certain demon’s love and attention.
And that look Crowley gives him is just as devastating to me as Aziraphale’s sunshine smile over getting what he wanted.
That is a look of UTTER INDULGENCE.
He absolutely knows he’s been played but is happy to let it happen, because there is nothing quite as satisfying as indulging Aziraphale.
That is a look that says, “You’re so obvious, angel, and it’s adorable.”
He’s made his angel happy, what the fuck does he care?
Anita Sarkeesian (previously)
is a brilliant media theorist and critic whose Feminist
Frequency/Tropes vs. Women in Video Games projects revolutionized the
way we talk about gender and games – and also made her a target for a
virulent misogynist hate-machine of harassing manbabies who threatened
her life, doxed her, and did everything they could to intimidate her
into silence.
Polygon’s 9,000 word profile of Sarkeesian contains a lot of color about
her personality and approach (which is great stuff – Sarkeesian is a
fun and interesting person in real life as well as on-screen), but where
it gets really good is in describing how Sarkeesian led a massive
change in the way that games companies approach games, with “great women
characters” appearing in “The Last of Us, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey,
Dragon Age: Inquisition,The Walking Dead, Battlefield 5, Dishonored 2,
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Overwatch”
Sarkeesian’s academic training is a combination of feminist theory and
media studies, which made her the perfect person to bridge between the
insidery, jargon-heavy world of gender studies and a popular, easily
digested way of thinking through these issues for games practicioners;
Polygon’s Colin Campbell calls it “a toolkit that developers could use,
to lever themselves out of the box they’d made for themselves.”
This was literally and figuratively “game changing” – Sarkeesian wields
“criticism so sharp that it cut the past from the future,” making a new
world of games, at real personal cost.
That cost is also an important part of the story: Sarkeesian’s harassers
were unspeakably vile and vicious, and throughout, Sarkeesian made a
point of never showing how it affected her, though it did (as it would
anyone who was subjected to it). But as Sarkeesian threw her energy into
guiding and comforting other women who’d been targeted for speaking
out, she learned that her stoicism had an unanticipated and unwelcome
side effect: “it hurt other women who were suffering because they might
be feeling like they needed to live up to the example I was putting out
there. So now when I talk about these issues, I think that there’s value
in being transparent and honest about the reality of who I am and where
I’m at.”
Sarkeesian has stopped doing YouTube videos – she still has an excellent podcast called Feminist Frequency Radio
– and she discusses how she feels YouTube’s moment has passed: “When I
go and speak at schools and colleges, students tell me they want to do
what I do. But you can’t do it on YouTube anymore…Digital video is a
really difficult place to navigate right now. I don’t think it has a
shelf life, as it stands.”
