No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

hedonistbyheart

I’m actually kinda obsessed with the implicitly expressed femininity in David’s portrayal of Crowley.

Yes, there is the literal crossdressing (which imo was really tasteful for a comedy and isn’t necessarily even crossdressing for agender beings) but also just his general looks and behavior.

There was talk of the stills from the crucifixion before the series came out, how Crowley was dressed typically feminine for the time period and I absolutely still read him like that in the full context.

There’s also a clear preference for long hair judging by the amount of times he’s had long hair and then there’s The Walk.

It’s pretty slithery, kinda 50% snakes-don’t- have-legs-what-do and 50% Must Look Suave, but the end result is very Hips don’t lie and it ads a more feminine energy to him overall, I think.

Like I said, with the exception of Nanny!Crowley, it’s pretty implicit and I don’t know if it was a deliberate choice, or I’m reading too much into it, but I really like that reading personally.

(I could talk about the feminine energy Aziraphale expresses too, but it’s more consistant than Crowley’s so I don’t think I need to, I just appreciate the fluidity of their genders in general)

jumpingjacktrash

every so often a british writer has a character call ‘shotgun’ for a situation not involving a car, or even a mode of travel at all, and for some reason i find this absolutely adorable.

i thought of making a post to explain the history and usage of the term, but if i did that they might stop.

failure-artist

i’m an american and i don’t know the history. i guess it’s because people drive with a shotgun next to them?

jumpingjacktrash

nope.

ok i’ve been informed by a couple people that outside america, it just means ‘dibs’, so it’s unlikely they’ll give up being cute about it if i explain, so imma explain.

it comes from this:

see, once upon a time, the american west was very sparsely settled, and between the few towns there were lay hundreds of miles of wild animals, criminals, desperate ex-confederate soldiers with raging ptsd and more ammo than food, and semi-nomadic first nations bands who at any moment might be at war with the us government, each other, and/or local landowners, or just looking to make their name by taking some trophies and bragging rights.

so if you wanted to get mail, goods, or passengers from one place to another, you better be prepared to defend yourself and run like hell at the same time.

enter the shotgun rider.

see in the picture, the fella that’s not holding the reins has a long gun over his knee? he must be confident, that’s a bit longer than the usual coach gun. you’d load with shot instead of slugs because you wanted scatter – aiming from a galloping coach isn’t easy even for a sharpshooter, and the intent was to deter, not kill. you’d aim for your attackers’ horses if you were smart. a man with buckshot in him might chase you harder in anger, but a horse with a peppered flank was goddamn done with your nonsense.

of course, such exciting episodes weren’t going to occur on every trip. so as a matter of practicality, while keeping watch for attackers, the shotgun rider was also navigator, relief driver, snack-fetcher, and in charge of entertaining you so you didn’t nod off and drive your horses in a circle all night.

the modern usage is sometimes just ‘dibs the front passenger seat’, so i see how it became just for claiming stuff across the pond. but the general connotation is also that you’re the main support guy. the co-pilot, the map-decipherer, the one who phones ahead and asks mom if you need to pick anything up on the way back. it’s not just about getting to ride up front, it’s about being in charge of stuff, which is very appealing but also a responsibility.

and that’s why you don’t call ‘shotgun’ for things other than driving. because that’s the only situation, really, where you’re calling dibs on being somebody’s right-hand guy for a task.

driver still picks the music, tho. that’s a cosmic law.

littleroma

Passenger shuts his cakehole

jumpingjacktrash

it’s the American Way

fuckingconversations

Tbh it didn’t occur to me until I read it that anyone would take the passenger seat and NOT act as the right-hand of the driver.

Like, I’ve hand-fed my friends chips when we were on a long trip, so they wouldn’t have to take their hands off the wheel. Helped zip through the radio stations to find one that wasn’t static, or fiddle with the tech until bluetooth worked.

Passenger is in charge of making sure google maps or waze is working properly. In charge of answering any texts or calls to the driver. Checking in to make sure the driver isn’t tired on long trips, volunteering to take over if they are. Coordinating bathroom breaks if we have other passengers in the back, and figuring out where we should stop to eat or the nearest gas station.

Shotgun is a very important position on longer trips (and keep in mind, driving across the U.S. takes several days of driving. Twice a year I drive 7 straight hours from my house to visit my parents for Christmas, and I’ve driven westward on a 17-hour trip before.)

Driver’s responsibility is driving safely and maybe pumping gas.

ANYTHING else is for Shotgun.

Shorter trips, it’s not as big of a deal, but if it’s over an hour or two, you’ve got responsibilities

jumpingjacktrash

a fine addition.

it occurs to me that part of why the nuance gets lost in europe and new zealand is y’all don’t take car trips long enough to need a shotgun rider. or when you do, it’s a big damn deal, so you probably overprepare and take lots of breaks.

around here we’re like “hey let’s go up the lake this weekend” and next thing you know we’re off on a 260 mile daytrip with two cans of redbull and a joke mixtape from high school. i’ve soloed one of those and by the time you get to silver bay you’re speaking in tongues. you need a copilot if you’re going to be in any shape for fishing on arrival.

dduane

“Riding shotgun” has always meant supporting the driver around HERE. Can’t speak for anyone else. (Sometimes it also involves map-reading as well, sort of a crossover to rally driving.)

petermorwood

To my ear “riding shotgun” has always sounded American, and I’ve never heard it used in Ireland except by @dduane; “around HERE” means between us, and in a driving situation.

If “shotgun” in a non-driving sense means “calling dibs”, then the actual British term for that is “bagging / bags / bagsies / bags I”.

It’s used like this: “I bag / I’m bagging the chair by the window / last sweet in the packet / first go with the new game” etc.; also “Bagsies on the chair / sweet / game…” or “Bags I the chair / sweet / game…”

A British writer using the “riding shotgun” (seat) or “shotgun” (dibs) term - in fanfic? - may mean the UK has acquired it from TV or movies and I haven’t noticed (not in the UK often enough), or it may just be a phrase that particular writer likes. Either way, a Brit-picking editor would probably question the correctness of its use by a British character or in a very British setting.

—————

ETA: @smeelio added this comment:

I’m British and I use “shotgun” for cars a lot, despite using “bagsy” to claim things since I was a kid, because I think the history behind the word (and the history of the American west in general) is really cool, but I’m not too proud to admit I did in fact hear it without context in some kind of American media, I think a cartoon probably.

…and @rojav added this:

As a Brit who has (in the past) regularly called shotgun, both for the seat and other things - we knew it derived from coach guns but used it as a more modern version of ‘bags’ or ‘dibs’.

Thanks for the updates!

Now waiting to find out if it’s also commonly used the same way in Ireland - also, where and since when. Funny that a couple of my older books - Gowers and Herbert - speculated that UK and US English might become mutually incomprehensible. Apparently not - though there are some words and terms where the meanings are still completely (even offensively) different.

—————

If these islands had a historical equivalent of the car-seat situation it would be ”riding blunderbuss”, because that, not a shotgun, is what guards on coaches famously carried to fend off highwaymen.

These are coach guns: not illegal sawn-off (sawed-off) shotguns but legal weapons fitted with short barrels; there are even (just visible) foresight beads.

These are blunderbusses. The top one even has a spring-loaded bayonet.

—————-

Sidenote. It’s long been gospel with firearms historians that the flared muzzle of a blunderbuss had nothing to do with spread of shot but was only a built-in funnel to make reloading easier on the swaying deck of a ship or while perched on a coach as it bounced along unpaved roads.

This fascinating article, comparing tests made in 1955 and 2005, suggests that the flare did indeed have an effect, though IMO that would depend on whether it was a taper all the way to the breech or just at the muzzle end.

The effect of either on a highwayman’s morale is obvious, since the business end of a blunderbuss looks like this…

Dost thou feel luckie, punque? Come, mayke my daye.

As Douglas Adams wrote in “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”:

The designer of the gun had clearly been instructed not to beat about the bush…. "Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them.”

That photo was taken from the wrong end…

The article includes an interesting quote from 1773 suggesting that because of the monstrous kick from a fully loaded blunderbuss (modern footage of antique guns always uses a much reduced load in case of age-related bursting) they were fired from the hip.

During this, however, I met with a small accident, by firing myself one of the blunderbusses, which I placed like a musquet against my shoulder; when I received such a stroke by its rebounding, as threw me backward over a large hogshead of beef, and had nearly dislocated my right arm. This however it seems was owing to my ignorance of the manner of using the blunderbuss, as I have since been informed that all such weapons ought to be fired under the hand, especially when heavily charged; and then by swinging round the body suddenly, the force of the rebound is broken, and the effect scarcely sensible. I insert this only to shew [sic] in what manner the heavily-loaded muscatoons [sic] ought always to be fired; especially since, without any aim, the execution from their wide mouth is always equally fatal.

However this 1740 engraving at the British Museum graphically shows otherwise.