I’m four years late to this fandom so I’m sure this isn’t an original thought but:
I don’t think Aziraphale’s “may you be forgiven” and “I forgive you” were romantic. I’ve seen that interpretation a lot, but it doesn’t strike me that way.
In both cases, Aziraphale is using the word “forgiveness” as in divine Forgiveness. It’s the same thing as when he says things like “you were an angel once.” It’s the way he rationalizes spending so much time with Crowley even though he’s a demon and it’s expressly forbidden. He was an angel once, and he has some goodness inside him, and maybe when god sees that, she’ll forgive him, and approve of their relationship. In the bandstand and later outside the bookshop, he’s clinging desperately to the idea that if he can just get in touch with god and explain the situation, she’ll understand, and then the world and Crowley will be saved. When he says “may you be forgiven” to Crowley’s rant against god, it’s in that vein.
Outside the bookshop, Crowley tries desperately to convince him one more time to go off together. Aziraphale is still thinking that he’ll just talk to god and sort everything out. Crowley says “how could someone as clever as you be so stupid?” And to that, Aziraphale says “I forgive you.” This one feels more personal than the first, but ultimately it comes from the same place, and elicits the same reaction of frustration and desperation from Crowley.
In Aziraphale’s mind, Crowley should want to be forgiven, because there’s goodness in him, because he wants to protect the world and humanity as much as Aziraphale does. But they’d be on opposite sides in the great war, and if heaven triumphed over hell, he’d lose Crowley forever. The whole show so far, he’s been trying to figure out how he could possibly keep Crowley in the face of the apocalypse, and what he sees as heaven’s inevitable triumph. I heard Aziraphale’s “I forgive you” outside the bookstore as almost his counteroffer to Crowley. He’s saying, you don’t have to go, Crowley, I forgive you, I see the good in you, and I know if I can just talk to god, we’ll be able to sort everything out. He’s still clinging to his faith, and hoping Crowley will see his point of view.
Crowley doesn’t want to be Forgiven, and he certainly doesn’t want to be an angel again. He’s come to terms with what Aziraphale still hasn’t yet, that heaven and hell are equally cruel, and don’t care about good and evil in the way he and Aziraphale do. They’re just names of sides to them. The earth is just a chessboard and humanity are the pieces. Before the first war, there were no angels or demons, that distinction didn’t exist, and Crowley knows too well that it’s artificial. He doesn’t want to be an Angel any more than he wants to be a Demon. He just wants to be himself and to be left alone, and to not be punished for being who he is.
It takes Aziraphale talking to the Metatron to realize it, but the goodness in Crowley isn’t evidence of his inherent angelic nature or evidence that he would or should be Forgiven by god, it’s just Crowley, it’s just who he is. That realization, the moment when he calls Crowley after talking to the Metatron, is more romantic to me. It’s the first time he sees Crowley for who he is and fully acknowledges to himself what they mean to each other, without rationalizing about it.
In the past I’ve shared other people’s musings about the different interpretations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Namely, why Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, even though he knows it means he’ll lose her forever. So many people seem to think they’ve found the one true explanation of the myth. But to me, the beauty of myths is that they have many possible meanings.
So I thought I would share a list of every interpretation I know, from every serious adaptation of the story and every analysis I’ve ever heard or read, of why Orpheus looks back.
One interpretation – advocated by Monteverdi’s opera, for example – is that the backward glance represents excessive passion and a fatal lack of self-control. Orpheus loves Eurydice to such excess that he tries to defy the laws of nature by bringing her back from the dead, yet that very same passion dooms his quest fo fail, because he can’t resist the temptation to look back at her.
He can also be seen as succumbing to that classic “tragic flaw” of hubris, excessive pride. Because his music and his love conquer the Underworld, it might be that he makes the mistake of thinking he’s entirely above divine law, and fatally allows himself to break the one rule that Hades and Persephone set for him.
Then there are the versions where his flaw is his lack of faith, because he looks back out of doubt that Eurydice is really there. I think there are three possible interpretations of this scenario, which can each work alone or else co-exist with each other. From what I’ve read about Hadestown, it sounds as if it combines all three.
In one interpretation, he doubts Hades and Persephone’s promise. Will they really give Eurydice back to him, or is it all a cruel trick? In this case, the message seems to be a warning to trust in the gods; if you doubt their blessings, you might lose them.
Another perspective is that he doubts Eurydice. Does she love him enough to follow him? In this case, the warning is that romantic love can’t survive unless the lovers trust each other. I’m thinking of Moulin Rouge!, which is ostensibly based on the Orpheus myth, and which uses Christian’s jealousy as its equivalent of Orpheus’s fatal doubt and explicitly states “Where there is no trust, there is no love.”
The third variation is that he doubts himself. Could his music really have the power to sway the Underworld? The message in this version would be that self-doubt can sabotage all our best efforts.
But all of the above interpretations revolve around the concept that Orpheus looks back because of a tragic flaw, which wasn’t necessarily the view of Virgil, the earliest known recorder of the myth. Virgil wrote that Orpheus’s backward glance was “A pardonable offense, if the spirits knew how to pardon.”
In some versions, when the upper world comes into Orpheus’s view, he thinks his journey is over. In this moment, he’s so ecstatic and so eager to finally see Eurydice that he unthinkingly turns around an instant too soon, either just before he reaches the threshold or when he’s already crossed it but Eurydice is still a few steps behind him. In this scenario, it isn’t a personal flaw that makes him look back, but just a moment of passion-fueled carelessness, and the fact that it costs him Eurydice shows the pitilessness of the Underworld.
In other versions, concern for Eurydice makes him look back. Sometimes he looks back because the upward path is steep and rocky, and Eurydice is still limping from her snakebite, so he knows she must be struggling, in some versions he even hears her stumble, and he finally can’t resist turning around to help her. Or more cruelly, in other versions – for example, in Gluck’s opera – Eurydice doesn’t know that Orpheus is forbidden to look back at her, and Orpheus is also forbidden to tell her. So she’s distraught that her husband seems to be coldly ignoring her and begs him to look at her until he can’t bear her anguish anymore.
These versions highlight the harshness of the Underworld’s law, and Orpheus’s failure to comply with it seems natural and even inevitable. The message here seems to be that death is pitiless and irreversible: a demigod hero might come close to conquering it, but through little or no fault of his own, he’s bound to fail in the end.
Another interpretation I’ve read is that Orpheus’s backward glance represents the nature of grief. We can’t help but look back on our memories of our dead loved ones, even though it means feeling the pain of loss all over again.
Then there’s the interpretation that Orpheus chooses his memory of Eurydice, represented by the backward glance, rather than a future with a living Eurydice. “The poet’s choice,” as Portrait of a Lady on Fire puts it. In this reading, Orpheus looks back because he realizes he would rather preserve his memory of their youthful, blissful love, just as it was when she died, than face a future of growing older, the difficulties of married life, and the possibility that their love will fade. That’s the slightly more sympathetic version. In the version that makes Orpheus more egotistical, he prefers the idealized memory to the real woman because the memory is entirely his possession, in a way that a living wife with her own will could never be, and will never distract him from his music, but can only inspire it.
Then there are the modern feminist interpretations, also alluded to in Portrait of a Lady on Fire but seen in several female-authored adaptations of the myth too, where Eurydice provokes Orpheus into looking back because she wants to stay in the Underworld. The viewpoint kinder to Orpheus is that Eurydice also wants to preserve their love just as it was, youthful, passionate, and blissful, rather than subject it to the ravages of time and the hardships of life. The variation less sympathetic to Orpheus is that Euyridice was at peace in death, in some versions she drank from the river Lethe and doesn’t even remember Orpheus, his attempt to take her back is selfish, and she prefers to be her own free woman than be bound to him forever and literally only live for his sake.
With that interpretation in mind, I’m surprised I’ve never read yet another variation. I can imagine a version where, as Orpheus walks up the path toward the living world, he realizes he’s being selfish: Eurydice was happy and at peace in the Elysian Fields, she doesn’t even remember him because she drank from Lethe, and she’s only following him now because Hades and Persephone have forced her to do so. So he finally looks back out of selfless love, to let her go. Maybe I should write this retelling myself.
Are any of these interpretations – or any others – the “true” or “definitive” reason why Orpheus looks back? I don’t think so at all. The fact that they all exist and can all ring true says something valuable about the nature of mythology.
actually im just gonna make my own post about it: please read more webcomics. please try them. every time people make posts about “aw man i wish SOMEone would WRITE about FLAVOR OF QUEER THING/TRAUMA OR ABUSE BUT IN SPECIFIC WAYS I CAN RELATE TO/WHATEVER” and then it gets reblogged into a giant thread of people agreeing with it and demanding Content i die because whatever it is is definitely being painstakingly created by an indie author who would really like for people to consume it and every time i point this out people suddenly can’t read lmao
it is out there it is free it is being made from firsthand experiences by people who care very very deeply who would be DELIGHTED to hear that it’s resonating with anybody at all, please throw some of that enthusiasm and support at people who will actually appreciate it
if you’re an indie comic person and any of this applies to you i encourage you to reblog this with a link to your comic and a short synopsis so people can browse the notes and find shit they’re looking for. or make your own post on your own blog if you don’t want to fool with other people i don’t care this is a sign from the universe that you should be louder about what you’re working on because people can’t fucking find it apparently.
i’ll go first i make kidd commander and it’s about an ensemble cast of queers on their way to kill god, they live on an airship and they’re all too pissed off to die. it’s free to read and it’s in the middle of its third arc right now. it lives here http://kiddcommander.com/
go go go
on second thought gonna add if you’re a READER and you’ve had Feelings about a webcomic feel free to recommend it here too
In addition to Kidd Commander, I enjoy:
Dumbing of Age - semi-autobiographical webcomic by an ex-Christian fundamentalist; explores a wide bevy of social justice issues in more nuanced ways than I often see, especially in regards to abuse
Monster Pulse - A group of kids (some of them explicitly queer) have their body parts turn into monsters; great analyses of trauma and transhumanism
Leftover Soup - slice-of-life story about the most philosophically inclined 20somethings in the world, seriously they spiral off into fascinating discussions all the time, this is basically Having Difficult Conversations: The Webcomic; the opening is terrible but stick with it
i follow a lot of podcasts, i can put together a curated list.
http://ohumanstar.com/ is incredible, it’s about trans robots (in minneapolis! not a huge plot point, but it’s where i’m from). it finished recently, so you can have a completed reading experience.
https://www.baldwinpage.com/spacetrawler/2010/01/01/spacetrawler-4/ spacetrawler started as the story of six humans kidnapped by an incompetent alien to help free the eebs, an enslaved alien race. it’s very good, sometimes it hits very hard. the first and second series are complete, the third series is updating currently.
http://www.rice-boy.com/see/ rice boy is a “brightly colored and surreal fantasy adventure story”. bittersweet chosen one stuff. also by the same author is the order of tales (completed) and vattu (on going, i think it’s near completion)
https://www.egscomics.com/ very queer cast of magical teens. starts out very rough, but that was 19 years ago. lots of gender transformation magic and magical hijinks, with a helping of tragic backstories and nerd stuff.
https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1 about a couple of weird magic british school children at a weird british boarding school. there are a couple chapters in particular that hit hard. also, it’s just very well drawn and written and it always updates MWF, which is more than most webcomics can say.
http://diggercomic.com/ digger is just a good comic, i should reread it again, it’s been awhile. it’s about a “take-no-nonsense” wombat who finds herself dealing with a talking buddha statue, a tribe of the best anthropomorphic hyenas you’ll see, and a dead god.
boy have i got good news for YOU
the good news is that on this list (to my limited knowledge) both my comic and gunnerkrigg court feature wlw protagonists!
the other good news is there are TONS of us working outside the aggregate sites, please please don’t assume those companies are indicative of everything going on in webcomics as a genre. my thoughts on that could fill a whole other post but i wanted to bring it up here at least.
I also just remembered there’s the website https://archivebinge.com , which is FANTASTIC if you’re looking for something specific. It’s limited by the fact that the creator needs to post the comic themself, but it’s got a great tagging system for both genres and content warnings:
and lets you know when new posts go up even on independent sites! Extremely useful for finding and reading a bunch of comics without taking agency from the creators.
i read a shitton of webcomics but here are my recs specifically for ones that aren’t on networks like hiveworks so they need more love (on mobile so sorry if formatting gets weird)
Softies i can’t summarize better than page one sorry. there’s a bit about a stubbed toe that will hit you like a freight train to the feels.
Job Satisfaction is slice of life about queers and demons and queer demons.
Radio Silence is a coming of age story about a British band on tour.
Ingress Adventuring Company is about Professor Toivo Kissa. He is an elf and he goes on adventures instead of doing his job, which is professoring.
Skin Deep is about a girl who goes to college and finds out she’s a sphinx (i feel like everyone reads skin deep but also not enough people read skin deep).
Sfeer Theory has a magical university for a very complicated magic system, if you’re into Lore.
Outliers takes place in a superhero world but these boys are just trying to be happily married in peace.
Some LGBT webcomics just off the top of my head
Muted - fantasy comic about a gay, poly witch in New Orleans.
Paranatural - All ages fantasy comic about middle schoolers who fight ghosts.
2 Slices - Classic, trope-y romance comic with a queer spin
Sleepless Domain - Magical Girl genre deconstruction. In a mysterious fantasy/sci-fi world where teenage girls sometimes have superpowers, how are those girls treated and valued? Content warning: This comic is usually pretty cute but has some serious violence early on.
Chaos Life - autobiographical slice-of-life comics about an agender illistrator and their gay, disabled wife.
Boy In Pink Earmuffs - All ages comic about two best friends who solve mysteries together and are also crushing on eachother.
Magical Boy - Fantasy comic about a trans boy who finds out he’s descended from a long line of magical girls and is destined to save the world. (tapas exclusive)
what’s up if you’re in the notes looking for recs you can’t see most of them because tumblr hides anything with a link in it, view this reblog to see a big ol’ list of webcomic links
hi hello @webcomiclibrary is another really great resource for finding new comics to check out! They maintain a very nice tagpacker archive with lots of different options to search through to find The Queer Story You’re Cravin’.
also not to toot my own horn too much but I make @cloverandcutlass which is a f/f fantasy romance featuring a trans girl protagonist! it’s about Disappointing Your Parents (and learning to be okay with that), and also about being a big gay disaster in general
What’s good y'all I muted this post ages ago because a lot of people are incapable of behaving normally when webcomics are being talked about BUT it appeared on my dash again so I checked the notes a bit and wanted to reblog the webcomiclibrary link! that’s all back to the void for me
Questionable Content is of ye olde guard of pre-2010 webcomics but y'all let me tell you it’s really good once you get past the first couple arcs of generic emo boy nonsense. The past few years especially we’ve got lesbians we’ve got trans characters we’ve got gays we’ve got androids of all shapes and sizes we’ve got mental health discussion we’ve got milfs it’s just a fuckin blast and I’m in love.
don’t forget during the WGA strike that animation is not covered under the WGA deals and as a result animation has gotten the shortest possible end of the stick in under-staffing, under-paying, and generally turning the field into gig employment.
please sign the petition here for Disney to recognize animation production workers as a union and reblog this post!
As of July 15, they are looking for about 9,000 more signatures. It takes less than one minute
i’m not the praying sort, but i’ll probably always have a soft spot for the astronaut’s prayer
for those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a possibly-spurious quote by alan shepard (and is thus sometimes referred to as the shepard’s prayer) on the launchpad of Freedom 7, immediately before he became the first american in space. it goes like this:
“Dear Lord, please don’t let me fuck up.”
[Plain Text: “Dear Lord, please don’t let me fuck up.” /end Plain Text]
Claudia Bueno is an artist born in Venezuela, now based in the USA, whose light art installations will tease and tantalise all your senses. Bueno works with circuits and motors to create ethereal installations which play with light, sound and touch, creating immersive art which is psychedelic and magical in nature.
ALT
