#fuck the establishment

[chronicallyuniconic]

The dystopian establishment says "keep people in work as part of their recovery"

When did work, ever, aid, or benefit a person's recovery.

Going back to work, left me out of a job forever onward. I never recovered.

They are saying these phrases as if we're all one and the same. We're not.

For example, about 40% of people in the UK have blue eyes. Do they think all those eyes are the same? Just because they're blue?

The Department for Work & Pensions are purposefully driving this narrative.

They can't get people angry enough about immigration and stopping the boats, because we value human lives, they don't want to talk about pumping shit in our seas, rivers & beaches, because we can see money means more to them than any human life, they can't get people angry enough about Ukraine/Russia, because that means admitting their oligarch ties, they can't get people on their side about Israeli genocide in Gaza, because we see that it's genocide and they are funding it, a part of it, they want people to look away from DRC, Sudan, Yemen, because we are aware that what they are doing could happen to us at any time.

Now it's the long term sick, disabled, unpaid and non paid full time carers, and even doctors & GPs to some degree, that are taking the hit. Hate is created. This is by design. Don't let them trick you anymore. Read between every line 3 or 4 times. It unravels so quickly.

We are not the problem, it is not our fault. The tax dodging, money laundering, wants-to-strip-you-of-your-human-rights government, is.

*I know working does wonders for some, but this isn't what will happen*

[q-the-silence]

We are poor and hot. The government wants our money and our bodies

😏

[prof-pocket]

damn i fucking suck at directions

[bemodreamy]

[perrysoup]

The next generation is gonna do great

So obviously furries exist but the Tories and the British media trying to whip up a culture war frenzy about “Kids in schools identifying as cats” runs into one major problem…

Kids fucking love to wind adults up, especially those in positions of perceived authority.

Imagine sitting in class, knowing if you say something funny that it could end up on national news because your head teacher is a frothing culture war bigot.

Imagine all the other kids going along with it and backing them up.

[drownmeincolor]

The Grammys have always been crap but catching the last hour of this years awards really felt like I was eating dog shit.

Big yikes energy at every level. Too tired to complain properly but it can be summarized with a simple eye roll and middle finger to the screen.

[hathorik]

well looks like it's time to research "anarchist cookbook", "molotov cocktail recipe" and "riot tactics" y'all.

hey rules based international order, how's it going?

the rules based international order:

[chronicallyuniconic]

How can anyone get better, under the conservatives proposals to get people back to work ??

This scheme will help so few people, but will definitely damage many.

Disabled people are not pawns for your political games

[bixels]

fine, me too.

[give-soup-please]

we need to talk about the fact that for many of the posters in season one, they are literally on opposite sides and/or have a dividing line between them

and now they're literally crossed over in some way for the season 2 posters

THEY'RE LITERALLY ON THEIR OWN SIDE NOW, PEOPLE!

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?

[hellwrites]

Being kind is the strongest form of rebellion 🧷

ngl a thing that I love about hobie and how he's represented is how KIND and NICE he is with miles above anything, he truly embrace the meaning of being a punk beyond aesthetics, and that's fucking lovely, a thing I always had in my mind about being punk is that being punk is being gentle with the ones at our side, because the establishment is already putting ours against each other. So yeah, spiderpunk rules, and rules with supporting his owns.

[fiasco95]

Peter: Wait- so that’s James’ jacket??

Regulus: Yes??? There’s literally the letter ‘P’ on it. Where in merlin’s name would there be a ‘P’ in my name?!

James, walking past: In ‘Potter’ when we get married.

Regulus:

Peter:

The entirety of Hogwarts:

(Regulus hyphenates their names.)

[ruporas]

kiss of the divine

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[bramblefrump]

Happy pride month to the fag/dyke reading this!

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

It’s not that Jason forgot, per se.

But between smuggling a toddler out of the League of Assassins, trekking halfway across the world, and finding a suitable hiding place that’s also child friendly… well, it kind of slipped his mind that he’s supposed to be… dead.

Something that comes back to bite him in the ass when he takes Dami out for some ice cream and just so happens to run into non other than Brucie-fucking-Wayne