#This is my meta post for this weekend

[lenaellsi]

“Crowley is still an angel deep down” “Crowley is more of an angel than any of the archangels” “Crowley was only cast out because he needed to play his part in Armageddon, he's not a real demon” “Aziraphale wants to rebuild Heaven to be more like Crowley because he’s what an angel should be” no. Stop it. This is exactly where Aziraphale went wrong.

Crowley is 100% a demon. He's not actually a bit of an angel, and he's not cosmically better than any of the other demons we see in the series. He's much less vicious than most of them, yeah, but he's also much less vicious than most of the angels, because how “nice” a celestial being is has nothing to do with which side they're technically on. Crowley's kindness comes from him doing his best to help people despite the hurt he's suffered himself, not any sort of inherent residual or earned holiness. He was cast out just like the rest of the demons, and that's an important part of his history that shouldn't be minimized, excused, or, critically, 'corrected.'

Being angelic is not a positive or negative trait in the Good Omens universe. It's a species descriptor. Saying that Crowley is still an angel deep down because he helps people is an in-character thing for Aziraphale to think, certainly--Job and the final fifteen showed that in the worst possible way--but it's not something Crowley would ever react well to, and it's the main source of conflict in the entire "appoint you to be an angel" fiasco.

We know that Aziraphale thinks Crowley's fall was an injustice, but why? Well, because Crowley is actually Good, which means his fall was a mistake, or a test, or a regrettable error in judgment, or…something. Ineffable. Etc. The point is, he’s special, much better than those other demons, and if they can fix him and make him an angel again, everything will be fine! (So once Job's trials are over, everything will be restored to him? Praise be!) Aziraphale has to believe that Crowley's better traits come from traces of the angel he used to know and not the demon he's known for 6,000 years, because that’s how he can rationalize his incorrect view of Heaven as The Source Of Truth And Light And Good with his complicated feelings about Crowley's fall.

But Crowley's fall was not an injustice because he's actually a Good Person who didn't deserve it. Crowley's fall was an injustice because the entire system of dividing people into Good (obedient) and Bad (rebellious) is bullshit. Crowley is not an unfortunate exception to God's benevolence, he is a particularly sympathetic example of God's cruelty.

And really, Crowley doesn't behave at all like an angel, especially when he's at his best. All of the things that he's done that we as the audience consider Good are things that Heaven has directly opposed. (See: saving the goats and children in defiance of God in S2E2, convincing Aziraphale to give money to Elspeth despite Heaven's views on the "virtues of poverty" in S2E3, speaking out against the flood and the crucifixion in S1E3, tempting Aziraphale to enjoy earthly pleasures because he thinks they'll make him happy, stopping Armageddon.)

Heaven as an institution has never been about helping humanity. And that's not an issue of leadership, as Aziraphale seems to think--it's by design. Aziraphale's first official act as an angel toward humanity was to literally throw them to the lions. Giving them the sword wasn't him acting like an angel, it was just him being himself. Heaven doesn't care about humans. It's not supposed to. It's supposed to win the war against Hell, with humans as chess pieces at best and collateral damage at worst.

Yes, it's easier to think that there are forces that are supposed to be fundamentally good. It's easier to think that Aziraphale is going to show those mean archangels and the Metatron what’s coming to them and reform Heaven into what it "should" be, and that God is actually super chill and watching all of this while shipping ineffable husbands and cheering for them the whole way. And of course it's easier to take Crowley, who Aziraphale (and the audience) adores, and say that he deserves to be on the Good team much more than all those angels and demons that we don’t like. But that's not how it works. People are more complicated than that, even celestial beings.

Crowley is a demon, and the tragedy of his character is not that he's secretly a good guy who is being forced to be evil; the tragedy is that he's lived his whole life stuck between two institutional forces that are both equally hostile to the love he feels for the universe and the beings in it. There are no good and bad guys. There are no "right people." Every angel, demon, and human is capable of hurting or helping others based on their choices. That is, in fact, the entire fucking point.

[utilitycaster]

Unsurprisingly I am very much against the "the curtains are just blue" mentality, but, moderation in all things; I think people can get way too hung up on one minor symbolic detail that is never explored elsewhere in the text or given more solid form. Are these characters a battle couple or are they just fighting in the same frame? Are the curtains being blue reflecting the themes of water and change and freedom, or was that a totally different work you imprinted on five years ago and in this story it's about the cold rigidity of ice? Is this subtext consistent, with a throughline throughout the story, or are you clinging to a single line amid twenty others that make a very different point?

[yea-baiyi]

i keep thinking about the odyssey i am THINKING about wei wuxian as odysseus. you were dead. its been years since you’ve seen your family. the child you left behind is almost a man. you wear a face they don’t recognise, you sneak in through the back door. the dog gives your identity away. the world knows it’s you when you draw your weapon. the person you love recognises you by the original symbol of your love—a secret that no one else in the world knows about, still, because they kept it safe for all these years. you get the chance to go back and despite everything, you found home waiting for you; he kept your place and raised your son and he was still there waiting for you when you got back. tell me o muse, about a complicated man i am extremely not okay

[ferahntics]

Unravel

extra orb under cut

[2hoothoots]

i was having a chuckle to myself last night about Gristol, and how his plans are basically:

Restore Ford Cruller's memory

Find Maligula

???

Profit

but then... of course they are, right? this is Gristol we're talking about. Fatherland Follies drives home again and again that he's still operating on a child's logic, a warped and reductive version of the world that he never bothered to grow out of. both of his memory vaults center on the images of his childhood, this idealized version of the past that he clings to no matter what. and that's still how he remembers Maligula, too - as this saviour figure, who rushes in to help him when he's in trouble.

[ID: Two slides from Gristol's memory vault, Glory to Grulovia! Left: Gristol clings to Maligula's back as she summons waves to sweep away his assailants. Right: Gristol and Maligula waving from a balcony as the people cheer. Gzar Theodore brandishes a dagger in the background.]

like so much else, Maligula represents a return to this idyllic childhood - to the peace and simplicity of his youth, when he was free from worries and responsibilities. in his mind, he doesn't need to make any further plans - once Maligula's back, everything will go back to normal. Maligula will make everything better.

...is what i thought, but then i remembered this line:

[Screenshot source. ID: Gristol, in Truman's body, bows on his hands and knees in front of the newly-awaked Maligula. The caption reads: "Yes, High Priestess! I am here to correct the mistakes made by my father!"]

and that's kind of interesting, right?

to be clear: this happens directly after Maligula sees Helmut-in-Gristol's-body, and recognises him. her line before this is:

"Little Gzesaravich! Have you come to pay for your father's sins?"

my first thought was that Gristol hadn't expected to still be in Truman's body by the time he managed to find Maligula, and this was him trying to placate her and buy some time until he could explain the situation. but watching the cutscene back, that's clearly not what's happening here. Gristol is answering as himself, and his response of throwing himself to his knees before her is, as far as i can tell, genuine.

so what is going on here?

in Fatherland Follies, there's this line in the ride narration that stuck out to me:

"Why didn't the Gzar help Maligula in her time of need? No one knows, but historians agree - it is Gzar Theodore's biggest failure."

other lines mention Gzar Theodore's "mistake", and it's wording Gristol himself echoes in the screencap above. evidently, he believes that his father abandoned Maligula, leaving her to her fate at the hands of the Psychonauts, and it was that mistake that lead to them being driven out of the country - that mistake which he seeks to correct. maybe he even feels like he has a debt to repay to her for his family turning their backs on her all those years ago.

the 'High Priestess' thing, though - that's kinda weird, and threw me for a loop the first time i played the game. it took me until my second playthrough to connect the dots, and remember how the room in the Lady Luctopus - Gristol's room - was full of Delugionist scribblings and symbols.

[Screenshot source. ID: left, the walls of the hidden backroom in Gristol's hotel suite, covered in scrawlings of eyeballs and Maligula's name. Right, the pinboard from the hidden backroom. On its surface are photographs and newspaper clippings connected by pieces of string.]

i mean, look at this stuff! he had a whole conspiracy board and everything!

we learn very little about the Delugionists and their beliefs as a whole during the game, but i think drawing the connection here suggests two important things. one: that Gristol was in deep with this stuff. i don't know how he linked up with them - maybe via old family connections, or just good old-fashioned digging (we know he's skilled at worming his way into peoples' good graces, after all) - but it seems likely that he's begun to internalise their ideas, maybe even warping his own memories of events. and two: the Delugionists themselves are, if you'll pardon the pun, pretty far off the deep end.

like... i understand why PN2 didn't go heavy on the "mass-murderer cult worship" aspect of things, in the end, but man this is such a tantalising glimpse into the wider mythos around Maligula. Gristol is proud and haughty and thinks himself above everyone else; the fact that his first reaction seeing Maligula is to throw himself to the ground at her feet says so much about the way he's come to see her. he's not just trying to bring back Maligula, his childhood bodyguard. he's trying to bring back Maligula, the High Priestess of the deluge, the semi-mythical figure whose supporters believe even death couldn't stop. he doesn't even flinch at the way she confronts him, and maybe it's because he's bought in so completely to this deified figurehead, this idea of Maligula; more a living force of nature than a person. and it all comes back to the same place: an abdication of responsibility, not just to the person who protected him when he was little but to this avatar of floods and destruction. Maligula will make everything better.

i'd write more about my thoughts on the Delugionists but that'd be taking a hard turn into speculation, and this is already kind of long and rambling so i'd better end it here. but what an unexpected and evocative line, right? it's some of the only stuff we have to go off of regarding the Delugionists as a whole, but i think it does such a good job of hinting at the wider story - at teasing another layer to the mythos surrounding Maligula, one whose ripples we see throughout the game but which never quite breaches the surface.

[lizardkingeliot]

I guess I’ll see you all in... just under six hours 💀

[darling-wendy]

rei and miri's physicality: a chronological analysis (part 1)

Time to go into one of the meta topics that has been buzzing in my head for a while now. It's about how Miri and Rei interact with respect to physical contact, and how I am smitten by the way he's so gentle with her and lets her take liberties with him. This is gonna be long and image-heavy [NB now has descriptions]. I have to split it into two parts because of the image limit.

Episode 2! This is the first time that Miri and Rei have physical contact with each other, and it's Kazuki pawning her off to Rei so he can make breakfast without her running underfoot.

As I went to get these screencaps, I noticed that Rei's hands automatically come up to hold her even though he's clearly kind of sceptical about the arrangement at this point. (Lol at Kazuki backing away as though he's afraid Miri is radioactive).

Episode 3! And here begins a running gag about Miri's favourite way to wake up Rei lmao.

I'm curious as to why Rei was sleeping on the sofa to begin with, when that's where they put Miri until she gets her own room in episode 4, and Miri didn't know Rei slept in the bathroom until later on.

Miri goes looking for Rei after Kazuki turns down her request to sleep with him. She finds Rei sleeping in the bathtub as per usual for him and eagerly clambers into the tub so she can sleep with him. Going by the setup of Misaki's apartment in episode 11, she's probably used to sleeping with her mother.

Despite his resting bitch face and reserved demeanour, Miri is already super comfortable with him. She's plopped on his chest, pawing at his face, and goading him to smile. And Rei is very accommodating of her whims. He later tells her to stop kicking the back of his seat in the car, but doesn't tell her to stop pawing at his face. Around this time in the story, Kazuki complained about her climbing into his lap when he was trying to eat, but Rei just....lets this happen lol.

There's a cut out and it fades back into her asleep in the tub, wrapped in Rei's blanket as he looks down at her from outside it. The implication seems to be that she just tired herself out pawing at Rei and then he relinquished his sleeping spot, probably to go out on the sofa.

Such a significant moment. I had already realised that this was the first time that Rei had addressed Miri by name, but it was only while I was drafting this post that it hit me that this was also the first time he had willingly and consciously initiated physical contact with her. I also think it's significant that he repeats the 'Let's go home, Miri' line after she's jumped into his arms. It's him fully committing to the sentiment.

It's sweet how after he has made his 'I'm her papa' resolve, he doesn't seem to put her down again until they meet back up with Kazuki.

Episode 4!

It's so adorable how Miri loves climbing on Rei and how he just let's her despite him not being a tactile person.

Him keeping Miri on his lap after they both woke up from their nap is so precious.

Tsundere Rei lol. Even though he acted very put upon to be there, he was clearly paying attention and even anticipated the high five coming before Kazuki did.

I think this is the only instance of her hugging both their legs at once and I love it. I love it! It's so dear to me. I love this family 😭

Episode 5!

Rei's expression here is golden. Miri, like most small children, is very adorable. But, also like most small children, she can be very annoying lol.

We get another instance of her preferred method of waking up Rei--jumping on him--band she even shakes him for good measure, but he's simply too tired to react.

This is also a good point to note the difference between him sensing something and waking up before she even flipped the lights in episode 3 and the way he's now so comfortable with her presence here that can even sleep through her deliberately trying to wake him.

I wish I had a gif because screenshots do not do justice to the softness with which Rei picks up and gazes at Miri while she's asleep. He's 1000% having a 'that's my baby girl; I'm her dad' moment.

And just look at his expression after Kyu reveals he knows what the deal is. He's nervous about what Kyu will do, and there's also so much 'don't take her away from me' energy coming off him. I see in him shades of the Rei who will tell Kazuki that he wants to keep taking care of her after her mother is killed.

And that's part one! Part two is here.

[fallen-elytrian]

Okay, okay, I’m going to start this by saying I haven’t actually watched the lore yet, I’ve only seen people screaming about it

But, but. Apparently. Sam and Phil knew each other. Really knew each other. Before the Dream SMP. But had a falling out because of Sam’s clones

I feel like that adds a LOT of layers to the interaction Sam and Phil have in that one Tommy stream. The one right after dream escapes prison (link timestamp- 41:51)

They have this interaction:

Sam: Oh, Philza

Phil: Sam

Sam: it’s good to see you!

Phil: I wish I could say the same

And I know, I know it’s mainly because the prison break literally just happened but. I can’t help but feel. There’s a lot being unsaid there. That it goes deeper than that

“I wish I could say the same” I wish I didn’t know this was a clone. I wish you were who you were before all this. I wish you listen to me when I told you to stop. I wish I was looking at the original you

[sweetandglovelyart]

Knightfall in Dream Land - Page 14

Meta lands a hit on Whispy and dodges some air bullets as his friends cheer him on.

[misspoetree]

You know what I've been thinking about? How we never see Vegas sleep during the entire show, not even in the hospital scene at the end.

We see him wear various outfits themed around ✨sleep✨ - from the obligatory sexy silky Theerapanyakul robe*TM over comfy shirt and pajama pants combinations to the good old birthday suit. We see him sitting on beds, fu...kneeling on beds, lying in beds, we see him knocked out cold on the floor, bleeding out next to the swimming pool. But never actually just...sleep.

And I keep coming back to this observation because it seems to me that that's another brilliant detail of the show, another brilliant show-don't-tell-way to characterise Vegas.

I mean look at Kinn: he feels like he's carrying his father's expectations, the family business, the whole world on his shoulders. He is paranoid and has massive trust issues and yet...he's still able to sleep. Okay, he's sleeping with a gun at first and with his literal bodyguard later (double meaning intended) - but that's beside the point.

We even see Kim sleep. Hell, if we didn't have the scene of him and Porchay dozing on the couch, I would have wholeheartedly believed that he's running on spite, barely contained violence and aesthetics alone. Plotting and sleuthing 24/7, writing music in between. And yet, and yet.

They show us Kinn and Kim and so many of the other characters (Porsche...mostly Porsche 😂) sleep. But not Vegas. Never Vegas.

And I feel like this is a perfectly subtle way to underline how restless Vegas actually is. How he's always trying to catch up with his father's expectations, with Kinn. Always scheming, conniving, conspiring, always trying to proof his worth, to make his father proud. Running desperately after things that remain unreachable. Feeling stuck in his position, failing again and again, feeling useless. Trying even harder. Restless, restless, restless.

A bit like a tiger in a safe house cage, a bit like a dog racing after a fake lure.

So...how could Vegas ever just sleep like a normal person?

[heliza24]

just had a premonition of how ableist/sanist people are gonna be about Nicki when season 3 comes out and I am already bracing for it.

like I think the way the book treats Nicki and what to me reads as his very clear mental illness/depression/ptsd is already *not great* but I can just see the way fandom and ship wars are going to spin it into Nicki being "not worthy" of Lestat because Nicki struggles and lashes out at Lestat instead of being perfectly loving towards Lestat the whole time.

The way Lestat treats Nicki in the book honestly made me really angry. The way Lestat is so clearly repulsed by Nicki after he turns him into a vampire, solely because of the bitterness he senses in Nicki which is a direct result of the trauma and his mental illness. The way he rejects him as a vampire out of hand while he immediately falls in love with Gabrielle's vampirism. The way he kind of shrugs and goes "well yeah, Nicki can be pretty annoying so I get it" when he hears about Armand cutting off his hands. It's so ableist and dismissive, and truly the worst nightmare of anyone who has ever felt "too depressed/anxious/psychotic/etc" to be loved.

I trust the show to represent the complexities of this. I think the show has already done a good job of drawing a connection between Lestat's failings with Louis and his failings with Nicki, and I think it will also be easy to draw a line between Louis and Nicki's respective mental illnesses. We've also seen Lestat already acknowledge how wrong he was to leave Nicki with Armand, through acknowledging that he probably shouldn't have left Louis with him either. So I think the writing on the show will treat Nicki and Lestat's relationship with care and show the real tragedy of Nicki.

I do not, however, trust the fandom to get it. *Big sigh*

[chasing-chimeras]

what’s up with that map in 6x16?

has anyone done some sort of meta post about the world state in tw? i think we see a couple maps (a few town maps and one of where bh actually is in 6x6 but idk if the surrounding towns are real?) but the one that’s so strange to me is in 6x16 that shows the location of the other nemetons.

it’s weird bc it’s a normal map w all the countries (up to date at the time too bc it has south sudan) but then the oceans and lakes are just wild. i don’t have a screenshot but most of n+s america looks normal aside from a few extra lakes in the western us/sw canada. but then if you look at west asia, north+west+east africa, and central+east europe it’s like……there’s just lakes. so many fucking lakes and bays and rising sea levels but not bc most low lying areas are normal (netherlands, florida, etc). places that’re already hit hard by climate change like bangladesh seem fine but then mountainous areas like central turkey are just under wanter. and the lakes? i need someone to explain the lakes or at least make something up bc i can’t stop trying to figure out how they stuck this thing to the wall and no one thought it looked a little funky? idk man i gotta go to sleep

[uraharasandals]

I wonder how Unohana sometimes feel in the Gotei 13, because she's simultaneously one of the oldest (and hence senior, by age and thus by rank in default) and only women in a highly hierarchical and military organisation. She probably gets talked down to and disrespected a lot - especially given that she doesn't seem to be the type to openly advertise the fact that she was there at the beginning.

Like, Kyoraku and Ukitake knows about her past so it's likely that this was something that was known by people before she adopts her current demure demeanor. Also the fact that she seems to scare the everliving shit out of some people by her aura alone. But what if there were some idiots who weren't wise enough to keep out of her hair? And some people who looked down on her regardless?

Unohana would probably have made recovery for them as excruciating as fucking possible but still, thinking about this.

[radarsteddybear]

@belphegor1982 replied to your post: The one thing that has remained constant in the...

I've heard a lot about this novel and the 1980s adaptation, but never read/seen it. (But I love seeing people talk about things they love 💜) What do you love about it (besides what you just said here)? What was your first reading experience like? Did you see/like the movie?

(Replying to this like an old-school xkit user because it's my blog and I can do what I want)

In all honesty, the thing I love most about it is all of the whump and hurt/comfort. Ponyboy has a really hard time of it (emotionally, physically, mentally) at different points throughout the novel, and the steady stream of hurt/comfort is 👌

I also like how I find that I frequently discover something new about it when I reread it, which may be more due to being so young when I read it the first time than anything else.

That whump was exactly what I was looking for at age 13 when I first read it (and also what I was writing, but miles and miles and miles better and much more cohesive). Thus, my first reading experience largely consisted of me thinking, "More whump? This is fantastic!" (except not exactly, seeing as I didn't have a term to describe it yet) as I read.

I wish I remembered the academic parts of reading it for school better, like what we talked about and went over. I doubt we went all that deep (or maybe I was too immature to grasp the deeper aspects of what we talked about, idk), which is a shame. I think we just had a packet with comprehension questions to fill out as we read, and I can't remember if we did much else.

What I do remember is that we had a substitute teacher the day that we started book, and he told us that S.E. Hinton (the author) is a woman, which our regular teacher was mildly annoyed about because she'd wanted us to guess about it. And I remember the teacher explaining how to pronounce "Soc"* ("sosh" with a long o). Does knowing the correct pronunciation keep me from saying it "sock" in my head every single time I read it? Absolutely not.

We watched the movie at school after we finished the book; the teachers got together and blocked off a whole afternoon so we could all watch it in one sitting instead of in ~40 minute increments over a couple of days. I was disappointed that it cut out certain scenes from the book (which is understandable--a lot happens in those 180 pages), but otherwise, I liked it a lot. (I had some Opinions on the casting, though, that Ralph Macchio should have played Ponyboy instead of Johnny and C. Thomas Howell should have played Johnny instead of Ponyboy, but I was probably basing that more on looks than anything else, and as someone who doesn't ever have clear pictures in my head of what book characters look like, that means less than zero. Both did great in the roles they played, and Ralph Macchio did, in fact, fit Johnny's description very well.)

Some number of years later (no idea when), I borrowed the director's cut version on DVD via Netflix, but I have no recollection of whether or not it adds back in the specific scenes I was looking for. They've got it at the local library, so I'm going to try to go get it so that we can watch it sometime this week.

*"Soc" is the term that everybody in the book uses to refer to the rich kids, which is short for "socials".

[randomfoggytiger]

Realizing I have three hefty projects to complete this weekend-- one so time sensitive that I have to both start it from scratch and finish it in 3 hours....

Send help.

[serbaird]

i do think gregor is a little prideful in the sense that he really enjoys when people recognise his accomplishments or refer to him as the knight of flowers. he really just gets satisfaction out of being this impressive and celebrated knight when i'm sure that there are corners of the fereldan court who are so against commoners being uplifted to the ranks of nobility. even if it's, as in gregor's case, the most minor sort of nobility.