#(as we ourselves do in the real world)

[aleksanderscult]

How do you think Alina being Zoya-level beautiful would have changed her and thus the series?

In the story, even when Alina used her powers she was never considered traditionally beautiful. I think only Mal ever called her "beautiful". But her beauty never held much gravita in the plot. Only her powers and what she could do with them. Since she was the Sun Summoner, proposals of marriage would inevitably come to her door. One of the most powerful Grisha that lived at that moment. Who wouldn't want her as a wife and therefore an ally?

If she was as beautiful as Zoya then the only thing I can think that would be different is the number of proposals and attention she would get. They would multiply.

But the Darkling wouldn't let her beauty affect him (as we've seen him being unaffected by Genya's and Zoya's great beauty). He would only care about what she can do.

[solomon-tozer]

Select bits from Sir John's funeral that I just love...

So we have Crozier reading out the part about Jacob dreamed about a ladder, set upon the earth, "and the top of it reaching to the heavens"...

...as we see Collins and Stanley, the two characters whose mental health is a defining part of their character arcs.

Then, "Behold the Lord stood above it and he said, 'I am with thee ...'" as the focus shifts to Goodsir.

"'... and will keep thee in all places, wherever thou goest'".

Goodsir, who later questions "is God here?"

The following line and shot are "'for I will not leave thee'" as we see Jopson and Blanky.

The two men Crozier left. Blanky knew Crozier was, just earlier that day, planning to leave them. Jopson likely knew, as it's remarked later that he knows everything, and perhaps he's the one who tidied away the unsealed letter and wax.

Then the Terror lieutenants, with MacDonald too. "And in Jacob's dream he saw the invisible world, companion to the known one we perceive."

The men who were privy to Crozier's alcoholism, and were part of maintaining that separation between officers and men... but also Hickey and Irving 'perceived' Hickey's true nature.

So, of course, when we have: "So complete it would seem to leave no room for its invisible brother world" as we see Hickey...

that otherness, that not belonging, keeping out of sight, experiencing thing in such a different way but no one notices or even thinks it's there...

And then going back to a shot of the men gathered at Sir John's funeral. "The departed..."

"...who though cleaved from the frame that carried them yet live." They are all departed. Dead. Crozier is the only one who doesn't die, but he certainly doesn't 'stay' in the world he's expected to.

The contrast of the words of virtue and strength, from scripture and used to describe Sir John and saying he's "destined to reign with Christ forever", being heard as we see Hickey in Gibson's cabin.

The white glove over the hand that will offer up Hickey's tongue, his left hand reverently touching the spot, the fact that, all that time later, Hickey has come to believe that he can be a new god and reign...

Finally, for this post, we have "and see His truth amongst us" as Hickey reads Crozier's resignation letter, discovering the truth of Crozier's actions.

And not one of them is god, or has the truth. They are all in this terrible place where the sun has set, in this strange world they don't understand, in this "invisible world of spirits".

There's so much in this scene, so many links, that I just lose my mind every time.

[centi-pedve]

"all these scary minecraft mods just take away the fear of the unknown so now its not scary and this mod is useless" counterpoint: have seen many hardy fellows shit their pants about them

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

tonio doing a bingo little here

[builtyouahousefromabrokenhome]

Oh this explains exactly why I hated Mean Girls:

Because jesus christ NO!!! YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THAT o_O;;;

My family moved around a lot so I transferred schools a lot lol, often in the middle of the school year too. Thanks to that I experienced a wide variety of social dynamics. In the worst, most hierarchic and 'kill or be killed' schools, I was a weirdo outsider, sometimes with literally no friends (which was fine; I knew that wouldn't last forever, bc we were probably going to move again in a couple years). In other schools where there was much less hierarchy and performance, and much more solidarity and camaraderie, I had a lot of friends and was part of many social groups.

Is your school, workplace, family etc. shit? Well, it's not like that everywhere!

You don't have to ruin your life, sell your soul or abandon all morals trying to 'fit in' when the system is shit.

YOU CAN RESIST THE SYSTEM.

[aberooski]

If I take a second to breathe and think and 3 seconds into it someone calls me over the radio to come clean something they could do themselves again I'm going to actually scream

[featureenvyproductions]

"Why does everything need to be Gay now it's so shallow to make men attracted to each other when they could be Pure Platonic Friends -"

oops sorry I can't hear you over the sound of me Doing What I Want Forever because I have been watching movies, TV, and animation since the 80s and have watched enough shallow heterosexual romances that would have been stronger as mlm-wlw solidarity friendships to fill the space between stars in a galaxy

[ferociouslycreativemystery]

Me: I'm fine about my autism now btw, like I've come to terms with my fixated interests, limited tolerances and social inabilities. The alienation it brings is not ideal but it's just a reality I've gotta deal with now that I know it's just a part of who I am. I mean, it's not like an awkward conversation is gonna ruin anyone's life, is it? We'll both move on from it eventually. This is fine!

Also me: physically unable to watch beyond the first word of the first question of The Assembly because oh my god what if someone says something awkward or controversial or someone can't make themselves understood people are gonna get mad and scream about it online and I will freeze up and be stuck in the backlash forever I don't know how to handle conflict AT ALL let's just hide in the corner behind the sofa instead wait what if I became a hermit actually yeah yeah yeah that sounds good let's do that

[weirdo09]

i don’t think y’all understand what it’s really like being of african diaspora descent

[alfea]

it is so very important to be critical of the things you enjoy

[mejomonster]

i’m not good with words so i probably won’t describe it right. but the black/white mentality online sometimes of things with any flaws being ‘pure evil/need to be destroyed’ and expecting the alternative to be whatever arbitrary things the person decided are ‘perfectly healthy’... does not do anyone good.

i mean yes, we could go into it being an extension of purity culture, of conservatism mindset etc but like. at an even more basic level, especially because online spaces have a lot of younger people:

its really bad to view YOURSELF that way. and when you’re viewing even things way outside you that way, you might be viewing yourself that way. that relationship in X novel is bad because person 1 didn’t communicate right away, and even if they learn and improve through the novel you’ve already decided they’re “too flawed”, or maybe the person 1 never fully improves since its a novel and ‘awful’ to ‘moderately decent at relationships’ is the arc instead of moderately decent to ‘perfect.’ 

But my point is, about yourself: no one is perfect. You will NEVER be perfect. Please don’t hold yourself to the expectation you MUST BE PERFECT and anything less makes you pure evil/irredeemable/awful and unworthy of being treated fairly. The best anyone can do in this life, is try their best, notice when they do happen to mess up or someone lets them know they have, and practice trying to do better next time. You can improve yourself for a lifetime, for decades go to therapy and do all the right exercises and work on yourself every time you slip up even a little AND give yourself breaks so you don’t work yourself to death being overly critical of yourself nonstop... and still by your death you won’t be perfect. 

When I see people get very intensely angry about fiction being imperfect, about wanting it ‘perfect,’ it makes me worry maybe they can’t take and accept their own imperfections. That they see themselves as pure good or evil too, and either naively think of themselves as “perfect” which leads to ignoring when you do actually harm others or yourself (which will happen sometimes), or think of themselves already as irredeemably bad and never able to fix it (since any imperfection even if working on it is “not good enough” according to such a thought process). And that’s an awful way to live. You need to be able to care for yourself NOW, think you’re worthy of respect and fairness NOW, think others critiques of you can be put to constructive use so you can grow, think of yourself as the sum of all the years of growing and improving you ALREADY DID and how that’s a wonderful amazing thing you’ve accomplished! 

This purity culture idea just seems like its very prone to making the people sucked into it self hate because humans just never can be fully perfect, or sucked into never improving and growing and rejecting times they maybe should for their own wellbeing because admitting they have any flaws makes them forever ‘awful.’ That’s not true. You’re not inherently bad, period. You’re not bad for having flaws, you’re normal and human and alive. It’s okay to have flaws, its okay to gradually work on them because humans can only improve so much at a time, its okay to realize 2 decades later that oh you still have this negative thing you do and then maybe work on it then. The reality is we will never be perfect, we will still find our share of some kinds of flaws when we’re very old and about to die, and we need to be able to accept ourselves and appreciate the progress we constantly make and recognize we are valuable and inherently okay as people even when there are still flaws or new flaws come up. 

[agape-emo-eros]

As much as it'd give me the warm and fuzzy feelings if God was shown to be vaguelly (and only very vaguelly otherwise you sacrifice the whole ineffabeness of it all) on Crowley and Aziraphale's side it doesn't particularly matter and can't matter. Both Heaven and Hell are primarily guilty of caring too much about what God thinks. They are both caught up in what they think God wants and do either that or the exact opposite, mirroring precisely the same image. Characters can only be free of this if they stop overthinking God and focus on the real and tangible infront of them. It's about doing good first and caring if that makes God your enemy or ally second (or third or twentyfifth or not al all).

'What if God's plan is really to get them together?'

'What if God actually wants the angels and demons to think for themselves?'

'What if God actually wants the Earth to be saved?'

These questions are missing the entire point of the story.

I cannot stress enough that this is a satire of Christian fundamentalism written by an atheist and a Jew. What God really wants or has planned is not remotely the point. God could be dead for all that it matters. We're never going to know more about God. And we're not supposed to base our notion of what's right on what God wants. That's what fundamentalism does. Good Omens is specifically subverting that.

The only real answer to these questions is 'It doesn't fucking matter.' We're talking about right and wrong, good and bad, as it affects people (human and otherwise). We have to decide what happens. God doesn't get a say. Maybe they'll approve, maybe they won't. Fuck 'em either way.

[princessmyriad]

It fucken WIMDY

[mourningd0ves]

I hate a bitch who goes into a fandom or themed tag/tags things with that fandom or theme just to criticize and bitch about it? Or call it boring and make people feel guilty about it? Like literally do something better with your life. I don't go in my tags for you to shit all over something that I have a relatability to or connection with. Like you 100% have the right to criticize it and even feel repulsed by it, but Tag your shit anti-(insert theme) and hang out with your own group. This isn't twitter.

[ardentperfidy]

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