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ms-cartoon · 2 years ago

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So, I've been coming across a lot of clips of Wizards of Waverly Place on tik tok. I'm sure all the 2000s kids remember that show. Selena Gomez was the ish back then (and she still is). Usually, I would go back and re-watch some episodes just to get that good nostalgic feel. But I REFUSE to watch the later seasons! They just end up getting on my nerves! Plus, my moods are always ruined when Justin Russo shows his face.

Okay, it's mainly the fact that Alex is always getting blamed for almost every single conflict that occurs. I'm not gonna say it's never her fault, cuz she does have her moments, but sometimes when she uses magic, it's mostly with good intentions, just played out wrong. And she usually owns up to her mistakes and makes sure to fix the problem. But it's like, EVERYBODY is ALWAYS calling her out and most of the time, it's not even fully her fault! It gets worse to the point where her own freakin parents start to love her best friend more than their own daughter and they always compare her to Justin, saying that he's a much better kid and he would never cause trouble!! Do they not realize how bad they make her feel when they do that, and they are supposed to be the parents? They're supposed to be more mature and wise for their kids, but all they really do is pick favorites and compare one kid to the other. They rarely even stick up for her or praise her when she really deserved it.

The only traits Alex has that are bad about her are that she's selfish and mean. Like I said, she has her moments, but she has good intentions. She's the main one to fix any problems that occur to the Russos' and was the main one to save the world several times- WHERE'S HER THANK YOU?? She doesn't get one, just more trash talk and finger-pointing from Justin and her parents.

And y'all know Justin always gotta the first to rub it in her face and play the blame game.

Justin wasn't even that bad in the early seasons. I actually tolerated him a little bit (though he still annoyed me). But in the later seasons, he just becomes more selfish, vindictive, antagonistic, and just plain cruel. He didn't even wanna show his full support for his sister when she won wizard of the year. In fact, he was more jealous, berating and disrespecting Alex, complaining that he should've won. But like sir- you don't even deserve that title. Like wha- You put your own family in danger, TWICE!! Not once, but TWICE!! And who was the one to save even you from that danger? ALEX!!

Justin had a crush on a dark angel. Loved her so much, he joined the side of the Angels of Darkness and let them take over. Not only did he put the world in danger, he also put his own family in danger! And all because he was such a simp for this one girl!! And guess who had to save his a**!

There was another situation the Russos' got involved in, and the show makes it seem like it was Alex's fault when Justin was the one that caused the problem. Like that time when Justin revealed to the FBI that wizards exist and that he, along with his family was one of the few. He got NO repercussions for it as far as I've heard. But when Alex is the one to confess to the media that they're wizards, and only to fix the situation that was happening, she is the one to get blamed when originally, Justin was the first to spill the tea.

I could name plenty of more reasons why Justin didn't deserve the wizard of the year award, but those are just my main ones.

I don't think he felt genuinely bad about the way he spoke about her at all. The only time he did feel bad is when it came time for his video about Alex to be shown to everyone during that ceremony. He probably didn't even wanna admit he was wrong for it. He is such a horrible brother!!! He really needed a good talking-to after all that. Theresa and Jerry, that's where you should've come in!

And then we have the finale where they're in the middle of the Wizard Competition. Harper and Zeke get themselves in danger and are captured by a griffin, and who was the main one that suggested they go and save them? Alex! She literally had to beg Justin to help save them, but Justin, being the selfish prick that he is was more concerned about staying in the competition and winning. It is beyond ridiculous that Alex had to beg Justin to save his best friend! Didn't even care that his best friend might die!! By the time they came back, their free time had run out and they got disqualified, losing their magic powers. Leave it to Justin to play the blame game and point fingers at Alex like he always does. He didn't even care that it was a matter of his friends' safety, he cared more about being a wizard and winning a stupid competition. And there was also a scene in that same episode while they were working, Alex was giving someone their order and Justin threw something at her, causing her to drop the order on the customer! Like dude- are you serious?? Are you that pressed???

Theresa, Jerry... do you still think Justin is the better kid? Even after Alex risked her life/her happiness, putting her selfish wants aside to help and save others?

And then there's Max, bro!! For some reason, he starts to gang up on Alex too. Pointing fingers at her as well for doing the right thing. Omg, this girl just can't get enough. And usually, people felt more bad for Max as well, believing he doesn't get enough appreciation and recognition as a wizard in the family, but he really annoyed me in this episode!! He was mainly just following Justin, being horrible to Alex too. Even if he didn't get to keep his powers, I didn't feel bad for him one bit! It's not like he was gonna win the competition or keep his powers anyway and he probably knew that!!

What made me more pissed is that Theresa and Jerry didn't even stick up for Alex. They see that Justin and Max are ganging up on her, belittling her and just letting it happen. Then saying stuff like, "You guys seriously need to get it together and stop all this fighting!"

You guys??! Alex is the victim here! She did not deserve any of this disrespect! She was casually working and Justin threw something at her because of his resentment, y'know, like a mature adult. And Max came at her just because! Why aren't y'all criticizing Justin or Max for their behavior? They were the main ones acting up!

It doesn't even help that Alex had to be the one to apologize at the end of the episode....

Y'all, Alex was the only one to apologize!!

"Guys, I'm sorry for getting you to help me save our friends from a bloodthirsty monster instead of staying and competing in the competition. Because having our magic and being a family wizard is much more important than Harper and Zeke's safety."

She didn't say those exact words, but she might as well have. I don’t understand how Alex could put up with all that disrespect. If I was her, I probably would’ve left the family and probably never come back. I might just make a fanfiction about that.

I feel like I can point out plenty of reasons why the show just faltered a little to me, but Imma just leave it at that for now. All in all, Justin's a horrible brother and a horrible character. Max, I agree he deserves better too, but he mainly just got on my nerves that one episode. Teresa and Jerry are terriblev parents and didn't raise their kids right. Alex especially deserved better and Harper is the realist, point blank.

#wizards of waverly place #wizards of wavery place rant #rant #review #criticism #critisism #critique #critical #alex russo #Screw Justin!!#Alex deserved better

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actual-changeling · 11 months ago

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It was actually rather hard to decide how to begin this meta post because there are essentially going to be two main parts: why Crowley does not actually avoid/run from his problems and why "going off" is not a bad thing regardless.

Then I wrote the first part and realised this is now 2.5k words long, so uhhhh I will grant part 2 its own post.

With that, welcome back to Alex's today-not-unhinged meta corner!

I am going to approach this topic from a psychological angle, which a lot of people have already done, but without explicitly mentioning it or going into depth. All my information comes from personal experience, research, my therapist, and my psychiatrist, just so you know I am not making shit up. I actually dug up some resources my therapist gave me a while ago.

Generally, there are four different fear/survival responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Most people have probably heard about fight and flight, since those two are usually the only ones that are mentioned/taught, so I will stick to explaining the other two.

"Fawning" refers to actively being submissive and subdued, both physically and emotionally. The goal is to appear non-threatening and to calm whoever is causing the fear response in the first place. It shows up as being overly agreeable, not having thoughts/opinions of your own and ignoring them if you do, your body language changing (e.g., making yourself smaller, taking up less space), and generally attempting to 'keep the peace' or reinstate it.

"Freezing" is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin—you freeze. It means slipping into a dissociative state, which disconnects you from your body, your emotions/mind, and/or the outside world. Usually, people stop being able to talk well or at all, they do not move, and if they do, it is on autopilot; you do not fight or flee, you simply exist until what is causing the fear response is over.

While dissociating, your brain is unable to form full memories—and depending on how heavily you are dissociating, it does not form any memories at all.

Freezing as a response happens when fight, flight, and fawn aren't possible anymore, e.g., a child who has no internal mechanisms to deal with large amounts of fear because it's a child, so the only way to escape the pain and aggressor is by fleeing into your mind and shutting down.

Why am I telling you all this? Because most people tend to have one or two survival responses that dominate/they usually fall back on, and the same goes for Aziraphale and Crowley.

When faced with an outside problem and a lot of stress, Aziraphale's first instinct is to fawn, to placate the person, to diffuse the situation, to make sure everyone is agreeing, or, at the very least, submitting to authority figures or aggressors. It is what heaven teaches them—stick to the rules, don't ask questions, do what you are told. If fawning involves lying, he will do so, here the need for safety is stronger than his desire to be truthful and stick to his morals.

Unfortunately, the fact that this is his primary fear response is also the reason behind his extreme cognitive dissonance. How can you stick to the rules when you do not know what the rules ARE? So he is stuck trying to figure out what is "good" and what is "bad" so he can be a good angel and avoid doing anything that might be seen as bad or disobedient.

His secondary response to stress or fear is to fight—once it's clear that fawning won't work, he can and will switch over to being more direct and aggressive/less submissive. We see that happening when he gets discorporated in season 1 and needs to get back to earth, at the airbase, or when the bookshop gets attacked.

If I were to ask you what you think Crowley's primary fear response is, how would you respond?

Well, if you said "flight"—you're wrong, and I will explain why.

Flight is his secondary fear response, it is what he falls back on in absolute emergencies when everything is doomed and there's nothing he can do anymore.

Before that, though, he fights.

Even as an angel, he was already questioning the system, he was ready to go and tell God she was doing a terrible job, that her ideas were bad, that he wants to keep his stars and the universe— six thousand years are nothing! If you actively oppose existing rules and defy people's authority over you, fighting is the only option you have unless you plan on giving up or the response becomes too much to deal with.

Fear itself happens when you or someone/something you love is being threatened (whether that threat is real or simply perceived as such doesn't matter), plus there are a large number of more irrational fears.

Crowley's creations were threatened -> He goes against the rules, he wants to fight for them.

On the walls of Eden, he questions God and talks to an angel, his hereditary enemy, once again defying the rules, questioning them.

Job and his children were threatened -> He goes against orders to try and save them.

There is good reason to believe he went against God by saving some of the children from the flood.

He showed Jesus the kingdoms of the world—do we really think that was based on orders? No, it was once again Crowley not playing by the rules.

Wessex? He proposes the Arrangement, which is one gigantic "fuck you" in his fight against celestial rules. Everything after that goes back to Crowley knowing that their jobs suck and that they can cheat, fight the system by working together. In 1827, it gets him pulled to hell and punished, and yet he does not stop; he keeps fighting.

Crowley is the one who immediately tries to stop the apocalypse. Aziraphale needs to be talked into it, needs to be convinced with selfish reasons and personal pleasure.

The reason why both heaven and hell absolutely loathe him is not because he is a runner; it's because he constantly and consistently defies them. He fights.

In season two, he immediately tries to deal with the Gabriel problem while Aziraphale is standing behind him and saying "I don't know" to all of his questions. Taking him somewhere so they can figure shit out in peace is not 'running'—it's smart. Sure, it's far from ideal, but we see what keeping him in the bookshop brought them, don't we? The hiding miracle is what tipped heaven and hell off in the first place.

Aziraphale goes to Edinburgh based on a hunch, but once again—did that help? Did his journalist roleplay trip actually provide vital information that solved a single puzzle piece of that mess? No. Finding out that Gabriel was at that pub with some mystery person was a nice fact to know, but that's it.

During the ball, Crowley is scared, vigilant, prowling around the shop, checking windows, telling Aziraphale to "stop this charade" so they can figure out what to do. Aziraphale, in that moment, was already convinced that sticking to the rules would save them—a heavenly embassy on a technicality, surely the group of fallen angels who got booted due to not following heaven's rules will respect that.

Crowley goes to heaven, which is once again him actively looking for a solution, while Aziraphale also falls back on fighting because fawning is not going to do shit.

There are three times during which Crowley suggests fleeing—which is his secondary fear response—but those are exceptions. Let's have a look at them.

The first one is at the bandstand, the evening before the Apocalypse, and since Aziraphale is lying to him, the situation seems hopeless to him. Yet he is still having his 'agents' look for him, is still fighting.

Do you know why he even suggests running? He is about to leave when Aziraphale calls him back with "there isn't anywhere to go," and now allow me to insert the following passage from the scriptbook.

Crowley looks back. He looks at Aziraphale. Above them, a beautiful starry sky. And Crowley softens.

"Big universe. Even if this all ends up in a puddle of burning goo, we could go off together."

The sentence in the show is slightly different, but they have one thing in common: If.

IF the world ends, we can still leave and be together. IF.

Crowley is NOT saying "let's leave", he is presenting Aziraphale with a contingency plan in case stopping the Apocalypse does not work. He is NOT running, he isn't even SUGGESTING to run.

It's a "if the world ends, we can be together. We don't need to be with hell or heaven; we can be in the stars," because remember what the end of the world would mean? Eternal torture for Crowley while Aziraphale bores himself to death in heaven.

The next time he suggests it again—when he stops Aziraphale on the street—several things have happened.

First, he did not leave. If he truly wanted to flee, he would have by now, but he didn't. He sits in a cinema waiting for the end: "Out of time. Out of hope," as Neil puts it. Then Hastur and Ligur show up on screen and tell him, 'You're dead meat, Crowley. You're bloody history. […] We're coming to collect you'.

We all know that means "eternal torture in hell," but if you're not convinced for some reason, have another snippet from the script book that did not make it into the show.

Dagon is speaking from the Bentley's radio while he drives towards the bookshop, saying that something has gone wrong and they're sure he has a 'perfectly reasonable explanation' for it. Once he gets out of the car, however, Dagon still keeps going and says the following:.

"Your explanation, and the circumstances that will accompany it, will provide a source of entertainment for all the damned of hell, Crowley. Because no matter what agonies the damned are suffering, Crowley, you will have it worse."

Crowley already knows that. He has been punished by them before, heard, seen, lived torture, there is no doubt as to what will happen should they catch him. So he does what any person with a single fucking brain cell would do—he tries to get his loved one and FLEE.

Flight is the best response in this situation, and if you need me to explain why, then honestly, I cannot help you anymore. I won't go into detail about Aziraphale's response, but, tl;dr, it was shitty and incredibly hurtful, go figure.

Now, let's get to situation number 3, which is his speech during the final fifteen. We do not have an official script for that, but someone did make transcriptions for all episodes; you can find them here. Additionally, I will copy some of what I already said in a different meta post.

Crowley, stuck in his trauma-induced hypervigilance and paranoia, suggests putting as much distance between them and the problem as possible. I think it is interesting that in ep1 he wants to get Gabriel away from them, while at the end of the season, he is ready to get them away from the problem.

So far, I have never seen anyone mention that change! And it’s important! The entire season, it is hammered into our heads how much they love being on earth. It is THEIR bookshop and THEIR car and THEIR life.

Crowley wants to protect that home, and Gabriel is a threat to it, a threat to both of them, their life, the bookshop—everything. He does not want to leave, he wants his peace and angel in one place.

Yet by allowing Gabriel to stay, Aziraphale destroyed the sense of comfort and safety Crowley had slowly developed over the last few decades. Heaven nipping down every now and then to check in with Aziraphale is very different from him sheltering the Supreme Archangel who is running from ‘something terrible’ without even asking if he’s alright with that.

Aziraphale calls it their bookshop, but he fundamentally still sees it as his space to govern and Crowley as a guest; he even calls it a 'heavenly embassy'.

After another horrible week and having his previously safe space violated by several different times and beings, Crowley is back to where he was before—without a home. That fragile existence broke apart, so he is standing in the heap of shards and telling Aziraphale 'I don’t feel safe here anymore, let’s leave’.

He lost his safe space, but he still has his safe person, his best and only friend, the person he loves. I doubt he cares where exactly they go as long as they’re together and it’s safe.

Returning to heaven—it is the one place Crowley cannot follow him to. It’s literally the worst option, he can’t go back, he won’t go back. So he invokes the bookshop again, if you don’t want to stay for me, stay for the bookshop, your books, your corner of existence that I thought we had carved out for ourselves.

There is a common error that people make regarding the timeline, which is assuming that during this conversation they are already aware of the impending apocalypse—but they aren't. Aziraphale himself has no clue, and while Crowley saw the conversation and trial, he does NOT know when it will happen. For all he knows, it could be tomorrow, could be in a thousand years, and, even if he had been given a date, I doubt they laid out all the details and how to stop it.

Considering that his original plan was "get drunk at the Ritz and then have us time," I don't think he knew literally anything about how or when to stop it. So no, Crowley does NOT suggest running away from earth and leaving it to die.

All he wants is some bloody peace and quiet where no demons, angels, or power-hungry floating heads can interrupt them. A space that is safe and theirs. There are also zero mentions of where he wants them to go; he is not talking about the stars or the universe. He wants to get away from where they currently are because heaven and hell show up uninvited whenever they please.

If your boss and ex-boss constantly kicked down your front door and stated their wish to torture you, would you stay there or would you move? Yeah.

This post got very long, but it was long overdue.

I am tired of seeing people call Crowley a callous coward who always runs away from his problems when he is the literal opposite. You take three sentences said under exceptional circumstances and apply them to Crowley as a whole, when it is nothing but his last ditch effort to keep himself and Aziraphale safe.

One last thing: If you come onto my post and start aggressively arguing about this, I will block you. Genuine discussions and questions are always welcome, being a dick is not, and I also simply cannot handle some of the rhetoric people in this fandom perpetuate because it's very triggering.

Make your own post, don't do it on mine.

#alex talks good omens #good omens #ineffable husbands #good omens meta #crowley #aziraphale #good omens season 2 #go2 #aziracrow #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable divorce #the final fifteen #crowley meta #aziraphale meta #crowley deserves better treatment from this fandom #and people that actually remember canon and don't take some fanfic version of him they have created during the hiatus #so many straight up factually incorrect takes #i dont know if i will make it until season 3 guys

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