#go meta meta

[tallerthantale]

What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe Part 10: Returning to Heaven

If you are currently avoiding Good Omens content right now because of the allegations against Neil Gaimen, (which I personally find both credible and damning) consider jumping to the end note rather than skipping this post.

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that can be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first two as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness.’ The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays buried outside of Aziraphale's experience of consciousness, whatever arrangement best prevents a threat to Aziraphale’s sense of self and makes whatever he is inclined to do feel right.

Season Two Begins

Aziraphale is still not really acting like someone who rebelled against heaven. He's imagining himself as having a polite dispute with his colleagues, they just don’t send him on missions anymore and don't want his reports. As far as he sees it, the library is still an embassy (independent), and he is still a representative of God (independent). He is trying to maintain a semblance of the habits and routines he had when he was avowed by heaven, the familiarity is comforting, but there are limits to how much of it he can recreate. Some of what he’s missing he gets from Crowley, giving him reports instead. 

The sword of Damocles dropped, and Aziraphale remains ethereal. In many ways both he and Crowley are free to give up their tendencies to live double lives, but old habits die hard. During the lockdown, Aziraphale doesn’t want Crowley moving in, it doesn’t feel right yet. Crowley still feels a theoretical obligation to perform acts of demonic influence, even though he doesn’t actually want to. They have over 6000 years of earthly lived experience pushing themselves to go through the motions, and 4 years of something like freedom. They spent almost three times the time raising the wrong antichrist to write rude words on a description of a dinosaur. 

Aziraphale has the tools he needs to create a belief that he and Crowley can carve out a life together, but he is still sorting out the details. We start to see it in ‘our car’ and the implied ‘our shop.’ The ‘our car’ was presumptuous, and Aziraphale does take Crowley’s willingness to cave for granted in ways that are concerning, but there are some points of context that add depth to it. 1) Crowley actively enjoys complaining about things he isn't really bothered by and they both know it. 2) Bentley is sentient, and clearly considers Aziraphale a co-parent. 3) Aziraphale claiming Bentley as a joint asset seems to have prevented demons from entering uninvited.

I do think The Ball was Aziraphale's version of a confession, hoping they would dance, and talk things through as they danced. It’s not the best plan, because there are a ton of built up conversations they need to have with each other that are going to be hard to do with a room full of people as a backdrop. Even so, it could have been starting point for those conversations. He really is trying to make something happen, and he’s going at the preparations full steam while Crowley is still in ‘it’s not like that’ mode. I read Crowley's confusion as him personally being veeery asexual, and assuming all along that Aziraphale was the same. IMO, he was completely oblivious to possibility that Aziraphale could be comparatively allo, though there are many open interpretations.

The big jumps forward with Aziraphale’s understanding of his relationship to Crowley, the universe, humanity, and the world do not erase his older beliefs. They add to his options. As we get to the end of Season 2, he’s got a lot of options. As I went into at the start of this rambling mess, in a way Aziraphale still believes everything he has ever believed, no matter how self contradictory that gets. Some things are just deeper in storage than others. That said, I think we can talk about what his recently active beliefs are through the modern events of Season 2. In my opinion, this is where things stand in the mind of Aziraphale:

Angels are aligned with good in the abstract, demons with evil in the abstract, and they imperatively should act in accordance with that, even if often they descriptively don’t. 

This follows metaphysical (ethereal / occult ) categories, not professional roles, and therefore still applies to both Aziraphale and Crowley.

Crowley would be better off free of the obligation to be up to no good, and no longer being professionally a demon hasn’t done the trick.

God felled Crowley as a deliberate injustice in service of a bigger picture plan.

God plays games, but in the service of a greater good, and heaven ought to be aligned with Her purpose. Heaven is currently failing in that obligation.

Aziraphale still thinks he can intuit God’s will and is mostly aligned with it. 

Heaven is being run by angels that are out of line with God’s will, but they retain their angelic nature because they are too ignorant to be responsible for their failings.

He was able to successfully convince Gabriel and Beelzebub to cancel the war.

The institution of heaven is powerful enough to crush them both if diplomacy fails.

The bookshop and car are mutually owned by him and Crowley. Their earthly existence is for them both to share, and they mutually committed to defending it.

Aziraphale and Crowley’s life on earth is unprotected under heaven’s current leadership.

Aziraphale and Crowley are the only celestials with actual knowledge of good and evil.

Having that knowledge incurs a heavy moral responsibility to choose good.

Crowley chooses good more reliably than Aziraphale does.

All of these play into the Final Fifteen.

Angelic Status

I believe for most of their time on earth, Aziraphale has stopped just short of pursuing a proper courtship with Crowley because of their professional and existential positions on ‘opposite sides.’ By the end of the botched executions, the professional role wasn’t an excuse anymore, but in the lockdown special he still wouldn’t let Crowley move in. The existential ‘sides’ still mattered. By the Start of modern Season 2, I think he finally let that go. He was finally ready to fully not care that Crowley was a demon. That doesn’t mean they were actually on the same page about it conceptually though.

Aziraphale has pretty consistently struggled to understand Crowley’s demonic status the way Crowley would see it. While to Crowley it is his assumed identity, and his former angel self is like a deadname, (or my favorite term for it, his ‘cis-sona’) Aziraphale understands Crowley to be suffering unjustly under the temporary state of being currently classified as a demon. Yes, there are many ways this is enormously dismissive of Crowley and insensitive to Crowley. But that isn’t all that it is. Aziraphale doesn’t think the fall was right, and he never did. Sure, that's like, a baseline expectation for having compassion for Crowley, but the implications for how Aziraphale sees things are huge. 

There are a few options for how Aziraphale can process this opinion that he can roll through. I think sometimes he blames himself. Sometimes he just avoids thinking about it. Sometimes he thinks Crowley will just spontaneously go back to being an angel again, like it was a clerical error. Most of the time though, I think it’s about God playing games putting together the Ineffable Plan. Aziraphale has been no stranger to God allowing injustices, he considers the greater good, the end game. 

If God is playing a game unfairly casting Crowley out, perhaps it’s to prove a point by bringing him back. Aziraphale thinks Crowley is the better of the two of them, and he knows he hasn’t fallen. Heaven sentenced him to death, and it didn’t stop him from being an angel. And yet Crowely, his better half, is a demon. Crowley has parallels to Jesus that are probably not lost on Aziraphale. Crowley coming back as an angel and being put in authority over nearly every other angel in existence the way Aziraphale imagines it would be a vindication of Crowley as the ultimate martyr, and a fuck you to all the angels who looked down on him. See end note.

The issue remains that it isn’t the framing Crowley would give himself, and it is alarming that Aziraphale fails to be aware of that. Aziraphale has spent 6000 years in a sort of solipsism, where his intuition is what he looks through for understanding everything in the world. Sometimes he understands that other people will see things differently, and sometimes that slips. Divining his sense of self through intuition has benefit as a tool to free him from heaven’s brainwashing, but it also carries a risk of arrogant superiority and blind spots. Aziraphale still isn’t fully at peace when it comes to accepting that Crowley’s demonic status is an avowed identity, not a transient trial. And as I said in post 3, when you try to run on intuition in an area where you aren’t at peace with yourself, that will fuck your shit up harder than a sideways pineapple. 

The Final Fifteen: Return of the Mindfuckery

Aziraphale enters the conversation with The Metatron believing he wants to stay on earth, and that the leadership of heaven is not aligned with God's ineffable will. When The Metatron offers Aziraphale the position of supreme archangel, his belief that God is good and heaven ought to be aligned with God's will gets pulled to the surface, along with his conviction that he can intuit God's will, and confidence in his ability to make a difference, already inflated from setting in motion Ineffable Bureaucracy. That on its own isn’t enough. Aziraphale doesn’t want to leave his life on earth with Crowley behind, he has just started to be at peace building a life in Shades of Grey.

When The Metatron offers angelic status, it gives Aziraphale the option to believe The Metatron is endorsing Crowley as a vindicated martyr. It lets Aziraphale believe that the Metatron is on team Ineffable, and Aziraphale really will be given enough actual power to genuinely reform heaven. But it isn’t the only option it gives Aziraphale. There is a fork, and not just in the road. 

When The Metatron offers to sanction his relationship with Crowley, he goes out of his way to bring attention to how unsanctioned it used to be, how long it was like that, and how serious it still is. By bringing up Crowley and Aziraphale’s full history, The Metatron is reminding him of all the thousands of years of fear of discovery and instability. They could have been executed for it, they nearly were, they could order executions again, and they might work this time. He didn’t need to point out how long running their collaboration was, and he didn’t need to refer to it as a de facto partnership either. Offering to let Aziraphale take Crowley with him could have just been about the fact that they are clearly working together now. The way The Metatron highlighted their history provoked Aziraphale’s fear. 

Aziraphale may refuse to believe The Metatron really speaks for God, but he is afraid enough of him to get mindfucked about it given an attractive enough looking alternative. It is particularly telling of the level of mindfuckery at play that The Metatron describes Aziraphale as someone who is honest, and doesn’t just tell people what they want to hear, and Aziraphale accepts that. It would have taken work for Aziraphale to keep that red flag out of his awareness.

Where Aziraphale has resisted the mindfuckery of danger from The Institution of Heaven before, the alternative has been horrifying. Lie to thwart the archangels, or allow the murder of children. Defy The Institution, or participate in the destruction of the universe. He had no way forward that preserved his sense of self, and he took the least horrible of the options he had. Going back to heaven may not look like an ideal option, he doesn’t really want to leave the bookshop, but as the Metatron initially presents it, it's not conflicting with Aziraphale’s sense of self. Framed as an opportunity to reform heaven into his own ideal, it would conflict with Aziraphale’s sense of self to turn the offer down. 

Aziraphale sees this as an opportunity to make the universe right. I don’t think he believes it will be simple, easy, or guaranteed to work, I think he feels obligated to do everything he can to try. If there is even a chance, no matter how small, he has to try. He remembers Crowley being happy as an angel, but not that it was God that took the smile away. He remembers Crowley looking for ways to avoid his evil missions and be kind under hell's nose, but not that God tasked hell's minions with doing evil in the first place. He remembers that Crowley often chooses to do good, but not that to Crowley, the choices he was making were choosing to oppose the system, not aligning with God. Aziraphale has been able to think of Crowley as aligned with God’s Ineffable will. He has been thinking it more and more into the modern era. He concluded long ago that God would forgive Crowley. 

He forgot to consider that it is Crowley who would need to forgive God.

The Final Fifteen: Schrodinger's Threat

The Metatron has appeared before Aziraphale wearing dark colors, offering an oatmilk late, talking about experiencing the earthly world. This sets him apart from the other angels, it is a signal that he has also eaten the metaphorical apple, he is not naive to good and evil the way the other celestials are. Aziraphale's only points of reference for worldly celestials are himself and Crowley. He associates the knowledge and mixed black and white with the pursuit of nuanced ethics. He has no frame of reference for an entity that fully understands the nuances of ethics but chooses to impose dogmatic authoritarianism anyway.

The part of Aziraphale’s mind that lives outside of conscious awareness gets to decide between two realities. 1) The Metatron cannot be trusted, he is threatening him, plotting to destroy Crowley, nowhere is safe, there are no good options, Crowley won’t play along, ect… or, 2) The Metatron is actually aligned with God’s ineffable will just like he and Crowley are, and he and Crowley can fix heaven together and live happily and safely ever after. If your priority is picking the reality that is most palatable, that isn’t a hard choice. 

Remember, it isn’t a conscious choice. Aziraphale is not arguing in an internal monologue with himself that he is better off deciding to believe the naive thing, the parts of Aziraphale's mind that are outside of his awareness are preventing his conscious mind from seeing anything other than the naive thing. Every reason he has to not trust The Metatron didn’t load into his conscious awareness and instead fucked off to the Bermuda Triangle. The evidence The Metatron cannot be trusted wasn’t rejected or discounted, it functionally does not exist. Every reason he had to know Crowley would never go along with the plan did the same thing. 

Even his own memories of his own time in heaven fucked off. When Aziraphale said it would be “like the old times, only even nicer,” a lot of us had an initial reaction along the lines of, maybe it was nice for you, but not for Crowley. The thing is, that's backwards. The Star Queen was having a blast making the universe while Aziraphale was skittish and terrified. The good old times weren’t ever real for Aziraphale, they were what he had to imagine into existence to cope with existence. Aziraphale wants to put himself in a miserable position of responsibility that he will hate, in order to remake heaven into a place Crowley can be happy again.

Much of the theorizing I have seen around Aziraphale's behavior in the Final Fifteen assumes a dichotomy. As most people see it, the story must be one of two things, either Aziraphale sincerely believes The Metatron's offer, and sincerely wants Crowley to come back to heaven with him and be angels together doing good, and sincerely thought Crowley would go for it and be happy about it, OR he was so scared shitless by The Metatron that everything he is doing and saying is put on for their safety.

The horrifying truth of how our minds work is that there is no dichotomy. 

Aziraphale sincerely believed in the plan, sincerely believed Crowley would happily go for it, and sincerely remembered being in heaven as nice, BECAUSE he was scared shitless by The Metatron and had to buy into it for their safety. He had to genuinely believe those things to feel safe, so he did. I don't think The Metatron made any explicit threats or coercions. He didn't need to. Aziraphale's existential terror did all the work on its own, and it did the work without leaving a trail for Aziraphale’s conscious mind to see.

The Final Fifteen: An Uninformed Decision

Aziraphale had not been told about the plans for Armageddon 2.0, or why Gabriel lost his memory, or that he was risking getting stashed in a heavenly closet after being mind wiped for refusing to go along with The Institution. I have been frustrated with Crowley for not bringing this up. While my frustration with both of their poor communication skills continues, I noticed that Crowley probably thinks that he did bring it up.

In the bandstand argument, Crowley twice tries to make sarcastic logical incisions to get through to Aziraphale. “You should kill him yourself then, holierly.” “ Unforgivable, that's what I am.” He is saying these things to deconstruct what Aziraphale said before, not as face value statements. Aziraphale ignores the argument inside them both, treating them as face value non sequiturs and offering his own. 

In the Final Fifteen Crowley makes another sarcastic logical incision by saying “when heaven ends all life on earth, it will be just as dead as if hell had ended it.” Aziraphale picked a hell of a day to stop taking Crowley’s sarcastic incisions at face value, because as much as this is a sarcastic logical incision still, it is actually also face value this time. Crowley is telling Aziraphale that heaven is planning on ending all life on earth. Like, NOW. And given the way Aziraphale has interpreted him in the recent past, Crowley would reasonably expect him to follow along with that. 

Aziraphale thinks if he is in charge, he can put in place the plan he expressed in S1E4, celestials keep the earth running so humans can keep having free will. Aziraphale is not happy about it when The Metatron mentions the second coming. But he still doesn’t know that he is queuing himself up for the same fate as Gabriel, since Crowley skipped that point in his understandable frantic distress. I really do think it would have made a big difference in how the scene went down if it had come up.

In this series I have described Aziraphale's choice as a mistake, but I want to clarify what I think the mistake was, because it wasn't deciding to go back, not really. The mistake was how he brought the situation to Crowley.

Had Aziraphale refused to go, both of them could have been rapidly removed from existence. There is a very compelling case to be made that returning to heaven and trying to dismantle the system from the inside while playing along on the surface is their best option. The end of the universe ends everywhere, they are attached to the earth, and even with the combo miracles Aziraphale wouldn't have it in him to wage full on war against heaven with a diplomatic offer on the table. It's possible Crowley could have been moved by that argument, or it could have prompted Crowley into sharing about the memory wipes.

Realistically the situation was probably moving too fast to put a real strategy in place, and I don't think Crowley would take the elevator up either way, but the most hurtful part of the conversation is how long Aziraphale goes still presenting a return to heaven as unambiguously positive news, seemingly oblivious to how Crowley would take it, and how Crowley does take it standing in front of him. As strong an argument as there is for them to suffer the hardship in order to strategically dismantle the system from inside as the least bad option of what's available, Aziraphale does not make that argument. Crowley can't strategize with the version of Aziraphale who thinks The Metatron is on his side. I still fault Crowley for leaving the conversation when he did, as much as I understand why he felt he needed to.

I’m not going to go through the whole argument line by line, but I’m going to do a brief review of my impressions of Aziraphale’s more ambiguous statements. 

“You can be my second in command” They’re authorising me to be in charge, I will raise you as high as I can on paper, no one will be controlling you. 

“Nothing lasts forever” I’m willing to let go of my attachment to this bookshop if it will secure us a safe future together.

“I don’t think you understand what I’m offering you” We can fully restructure the institution of heaven to be what we want it to be, for us and for the world we took responsibility for. You can have creative control over the reformation. We can be safe and together like we have wanted for 6000 years.

“Then there’s nothing more to say.” I respect your decision not to come with me. 

“I forgive you” for leaving me with the responsibility to fix heaven on my own. (But it was almost ‘I love you.’)

The Final Fifteen: The Aftermath

After Crowley leaves, what Aziraphale can load into his mind shifts again. He can see his fear, and that The Metatron is the source of it. All the reasons he has to not trust The Metatron come back, as do all the reasons why Crowley would obviously say no. The cascade of expressions Aziraphale runs through between Crowley leaving and the Metatron arriving are us witnessing the beliefs, opinions, judgements, and memories that are present in Aziraphale’s experience of consciousness being reformed into a different set. 

When the Metatron comes back, Aziraphale is functionally a different person, and this one doesn’t want to go. He tries very hard to soft no The Metatron. He really, really tries. It is the hardest part of the ending for me to watch by far. I don't think any instance of him was ever really ok with a version of events where he went back on his own. But I also think he fully expects to be smote on the spot if he actually says no, with Crowley smote soon after, and I don't think he is wrong.

For all the heartbreak of the ending, there are some optimistic points from across the span of my character study I want to highlight that I think are often overlooked. 

Aziraphale ideologically split himself off from The Institution of Heaven before Crowley got involved. 

He had a sense something wasn’t right even while the Star Queen was naive. 

He found his own way to form opinions for himself in the midst of an all powerful, rigid, oppressive system. 

He has played Crowley’s role performing political subterfuge temptation missions from hell who knows how many times. 

His perception that Crowley might want to be an angel again, while willfully ignorant and galling, didn’t come from nowhere. 

His tolerance and forgiveness of the other angels comes from infantilizing them, not respecting them. 

He was noticeably upset when The Metatron mentioned the Second Coming. 

Just as Aziraphale’s increasing stack of things he can believe doesn’t undo the imprint of his years of indoctrinated beliefs, The Metatron manipulating him into a disastrous mistake doesn’t undo the growth he has had, the tools he has developed, or the perspective he has gained. The last smile just as he steps into the lift is not sincere, and his stare inside at the end is a declaration of a kind of soft power war. We remember "but rescuing me makes him so happy," but the full line when Nina asks "Why don't you make your own plans?" starts with "Oh, I am."

Part 10/10

End note:

Due to a series of unfortunate events (or two), there was a considerable delay between the bulk of my "What does Aziraphale Actually Believe" series and the last instalment. While I initially felt very negatively about that, it also presented a particular opportunity, as I found myself reviewing the final draft details of The Metatron's manipulation tactics and how they messed with Aziraphale's mind at the same time as I was following the allegations against Neil Gaimen.

As things currently stand I find the allegations against Neil Gaimen very credible and very damning. Information is still coming out, but the odds of something being reviled that would change the gist of my opinion are very unlikely. I don't consider that to be cause to stop engaging with the fandom and analyzing the story. A lot of people who take that position frame it as separating the art from the artist. That is not the framing I use.

Typically I try to keep considerable distance between myself and anything that looks like psychoanalysing public figures. This because of a psychology ethics rule that I take on a broad interpretation of. The gist of it is to not form professional opinions about the psychology of specific people based on their public statements / works. Because what follows is skirting the edges of the spirit of those rules, I want to emphasise that it is my personal opinion, and I am coming at it more from literary analysis than any kind of Sherlockian attempt at deductive reasoning about the workings of a particular person's mind.

The narrative arc of Aziraphale's religious trauma, the way it plays out, the way his opinions bend and reform, the way he gaslights himself in the presence of The Metatron, the way The Metatron wields his power imbalance with a friendly disposition, the way the threats that are never framed as a threat mess with Aziraphale's mind, the way he convinces himself to be happy about what he is being forced into, the way his mind flips back and fourth based on the pressures of the people around him, the particular ways he is vulnerable to being subtly manipulated into appearing complicit in his own exploitation, the detail in how that plays out, these things were all written very well.

Or I should say, they were written very accurately.

The motivation I had to write the "What does Aziraphale Actually Believe" series was that a lot of the ways those features of exploitation were accurately depicted weren't picked up on by the general audience. Because they rang so true to life to me, but were not followed by so many, I sought to explain my understanding of Aziraphale's behaviour to people who weren't sure what to make of it. These mechanisms are often very counter intuitive, not understanding them is pretty normal, and the Final 15 stood out to me as having been written with a very unusually high level of understanding of how exploitative power dynamics operate in real life.

Which is to say…

If the author of Aziraphale's Season 2 narrative arc came to me, and told me that he just didn't realize how power disparities impact people, that he was trying his best and he just didn't understand, I would tell him to go fuck himself with a rake. I can get behind wanting more to be investigated, wanting more information to be corroborated, wanting to see the actual screenshots and emails. I have respect for people who still want more documentation. What I want to push back against is arguments from people who believe the conduct happened, but either think that it wasn't a big deal, that Gaimen could not have been expected to know better, or that he made an unfortunate mistake. Someone that oblivious would not have been able to write the story of Season 2. Someone getting called out for their abuse of power absolutely would claim they didn't know any better as an excuse, it's the most obvious excuse to make.

People who abuse power knowingly are often still able to create a pocket fantasy universe, conjuring sections of time during which they can believe their own lies. They can sit better with themselves and their own actions that way. That isn't the same as not knowing better, it is the most willful of all willful ignorance, and it can flip on and off like a switch. I haven't read Sandman, but the people who have may be able to say if it seems like the work was written by a person who understands that people can create their own pocket realities to live in, and jump into and out of.

One of the common things expressed by those coming forward is that they want people to know that they are absolutely confident Gaimen understood what he was doing. There was a moment in the "Am I Broken" podcast where the survivor made that point, and the host either didn't process what they were being told or dismissed it at the speed of light, pivoting to hoping this would be a learning opportunity for other clumsy people in power who are probably making the same mistakes. It was a very frustrating moment.

I understand it is confusing that the people who engage in serial predatory behavior can rationalize themselves into their fantasy narrative of events while simultaneously engaging in an intentional strategy. But it is what people do. Getting to believe they aren't doing the very thing they planed to do is part of the strategy, and part of how they are able to gaslight people so effectively. The answer to "do serial predators believe they are innocent or do they do it as a honed deliberate tactic?" is yes. Knowing that is key to spotting these patterns in real life.

[stompandhollar]

like. imagine seeing your sibling at 18. and then not seeing them again until you’re 28. and then not seeing them again until you’re both 58. but you’re identical twins so every time you look in the mirror you wonder if this is what they would’ve looked like.

imagine never needing glasses but your brother did, and then in your adulthood your eyes get worse and you suddenly need glasses and you pick out the same frames your brother wore.

imagine always protecting your brother growing up cause he was different and kids picked on him. but you always protected him. and then you have a falling out and neither of you speak for years, and then finding out that in those years you didn’t speak, he was being isolated and tortured by a monster and didn’t think you’d come if he called. but then he calls and you go. and his house has blood on the floor in every room and writing on the walls and his journal devolves into paranoid ramblings. and you can’t protect him because you showed up and he got ripped away. and you can’t even ask him what the writing or the blood or the state of the house means because he’s gone. and you don’t have a penny to your name so you have to clean the blood up yourself and fix the house and live there. so you board up his room.

[gossippool]

*steeples hands under my chin like i'm sherlock* so you see,

[gammija]

nothing personal but this kind of comment rlly exemplifies to me a disconnect between canon and popular fanon jmart characterization because they almost literally had this conversation in canon - except, their lines are swapped!

jon, for all his scared grouchiness, is a secret romantic, while martin, for all his forced optimism, is at his core a pragmatist

[artbyblastweave]

I'm not the first to mention this, but one bit that I thought was really clever in Steven Universe is the ways in which the show subtly justifies the cartoonism of the principle cast always wearing the same outfit for ease-of-animation purposes. The gems are a gimme in that they're all hardlight-projections, and even before that's solidified as a plot point they're otherworldly and superheroic enough that you don't really think to question it. But Steven canonically just owns hundreds and hundreds of those star shirts, which are leftover merchandise from his father's fizzled-out career as a rock star. Into which you can read a whole bunch of other stuff if you really want to, right? And I do want to. It's reflective of Greg's misplaced optimism that he got hundreds of those made in the first place, and it's a benign but visible example of how Steven's life is shaped by the knock-on effects of decisions his parents made before he was even alive. He's got his mother's superpowers and he's wearing his father's shirts.

[willgrahamscock]

crowley must have known that aziraphale was also in love with him, he tidied the bookshop, he was planning on taking him to the Ritz after his confession, he had their song queued in the car these are not acts of someone who wasn't sure what the outcome will be.

which makes it so much more painful that he still confessed his love for aziraphale with tears in his eyes and on the verge of a full blown panic attack, he left saying "don't bother" but he still waited by his car til the elevator doors closed. all because

[what-is-love-babey-dont-hurt-me]

He would not go there.

[most-normal-eccles-cake-ignorer]

The products of trying to recreate what was going on outside the frame during the kiss. (for ENTIRELY SCIENTIFIC purposes)

@actual-changeling altered my whole outlook on life with this post about Aziraphale's left hand (I'd only been looking at his right hand) and I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I painted the rest of the fucking owl (and his bf).

so normal about this

[akanemnon]

We don't talk about the scar

[snek-eyes]

The fact that Aziraphale emerges from this flashback

Makes this face

and then with a ginormous gap on the right side of the screen, proceeds to be like "I must call Crowley right now immediately."

[parisoonic]

its not my fault i keep playing against Daniel Day-Lewis mfs

[gossippool]

one of the funniest parts of the honda odyssey scene is right after logan pulls the car over because he's so obviously burning with rage over wade lying to him, but then wade says he made an "educated wish" and that bewilders logan so much he goes from being mad to just blinking and staring at him like this

and then wade goes on that long spiel about how he needs to save his family and at the end of all that logan just says "did you say you made an educated fucking wish?" his baffled ass was NOT listening 😭

[bloominglegumes]

i love normal guys doomed by the narrative

[thepersonperson]

Why the hell is JJK 270 called Dream's End?

JJK 270 being titled Dream’s End is so fudging ominous. That’s some Umineko type beat. I’m not sure if I should even judge this chapter as presented because of this. In fact, I'm holding off on posting the other analysis I had for today since I no longer am certain of what JJK 268–270 are.

There's two lines of thought I have:

1) Gege suffering from burnout and bad working conditions plus rushing has caused the writing to decline.

2) Gege still has a hidden ace saved for the final chapter and the weird writing is deliberate.

I'm going to humor Option 2, but only because the title of this chapter is called Dream's End.

(The most 'hear me out' discussion under the cut. Using TCB scans and leaks. Click images for captions/citations.)

[Small Update: Follow-up Discussion on why everyone feels OOC.]

Preface

"Without love it cannot be seen."

This is a phrase and philosophy I have borrowed from Umineko since I've started these JJK yapfests. It essentially boils down to 'discard your negative biases and try to examine things in good faith.'

JJK 268 & 269 have fudging tested that for me. I've been giving Gege and the characters a pretty hard time with the caveat of knowing how exploitative the manga industry is. I initially rejected the idea that these chapters were to be taken at anything other than face-value because of this. In fact, I cited the JJK 268 chapter title of Finale as a reason I've accepted things as is.

And with that same logic, I'm now doing the opposite... So hear me out! I've got some pretty good reasons to be doing this.

What's wrong with JJK 268–270?

There's a lot of things in these chapters that are fundamentally inconsistent with what's been established in throughout the manga. If we use Option 1 to explain these contradictions, these are last second retcons because Gege forgor.

Option 2? We're about to have the rug pulled the hell out from under us because the last 3 chapters have been delusions.

What first tipped me off to something possibly being wrong on purpose was the fate of the incarnated culling game players in JJK 270. Not too long ago it was established that the souls of non-sorcerers in vessels were unsavable.

The souls are suppressed in a way that distorts them permanently or their consciousness is outright destroyed. They were gambling on Megumi's survival due to him being a sorcerer and Sukuna's incarnation method being unique. 99% of them will die and those who survive will likely be vegetables, so why is there a sudden gamble on their survival in JJK 270?

It's such a neat and fine bow to tie this mess up that goes directly against existing lore. It's so ideal that it has me suspicious.

Brain damage from sorcery on non-sorcerers has been established as extremely taxing. I think about Gojo's Unlimited Void (UV) the most when it comes to this. Non-sorcerers were hit by it for 0.2 seconds and required medical intervention for 2 months to fully heal from it. Sukuna, the absolute strongest, tanked some of it and it affected him for the rest of the battle. ...And then we have Megumi who was under it for about 6 minutes and seems to have very little problems from it.

This is bizarre. Someone who underwent the month long bath and UV without Reverse Curse Technique (RCT) should be struggling to even stand after waking up. Sukuna had RCT and the Gojo brain damage still took him out. This screams of inconsistent writing unless...this is a deliberate hint that something is amiss.

I want to draw attention to the panel Megumi's UV damage is addressed. Just about everyone has been seemingly waiting around in the same spot for him to wake up. It's a bit weird given that sorcerers don't usually do that. They usually get a move on asap. And after the destruction of Shinjuku and the Culling Game Players still running about, why would they take a breather to discuss their plans that worked?

But that's not what started bothering me about that panel after reading JJK 270. It's that characters who aren't in the room, start appearing without warning. Look who is behind Maki and to the left. It's Kusakabe. And to her and Yuta's right? Inumaki. So why is it that Hakari, Kiara, and Ino are in Kusakabe's place while Todo spawns where Inumaki is? (And Yuta is facing the wrong direction too.)

That's pretty fudging weird right? You can chalk it up to Gege forgor but it doesn't stop there. Higuruma enters the discussion in a way that causes Yuji to pause.

Why is Yuji surprised to see him? (And where the fudge did he come from?) Shouldn't he know of his survival by now? And why is he in a cast? Higuruma had learned RCT and fully restored his arms before leaving the battlefield. If he's conscious, then he should be able to heal himself fully no problems.

And that got me thinking... Why is Yuji still missing his fingers?

It was established that he kept his fingers unhealed to help with Yuta's plan. This means that if he won, he has no need to keep them missing. Yuji has fully regenerated missing chunks of his face, including his eye, and stomach. He has RCT just like Higuruma. But it doesn't end there either. Yuji's number of fingers on his left hand keeps changing.

4 fingers, 3 fingers, dubious amount of fingers, 5 fingers. Once again, you can chalk it up to Gege forgor, but JJK 270 came out and the same problem started happening with Megumi's scars.

The same mistake is made within the same set of panels and very big page. That's weird.

ONCE AGAIN, you can chalk it up to Gege forgor, but when these errors occur, like with Yuta mistakenly having his ring on in JJK 251, Gege will note the mistake outright. Gege has made no such comments for Yuji's fingers or the scars. This many “errors” in row when Gege has otherwise been careful with these features could indicate it really is on purpose. (Kind of like Sukuna's everchanging mask. The thing was just moving around and pulsing. That was deliberate not inconsistency.)

What does this mean?

I think it means what we are seeing isn't reality. After all, the most common way to tell if you're dreaming is being unable to count the number of fingers on your hands. Another way to tell is the distortion of faces.

Readers have noticed that something is wrong. The weird timeskips, the lack of lasting consequences, design inconsistencies, characters behaving like similes of themselves, death and pain being glossed over like it's nothing. It all feels so off. But it's still close enough to the original to be somewhat believable. ...Is that not what it's like to dream and not know you are dreaming?

Why is it that the chapter titled Dream's End ends with the hunt for a curse user whose ability is to distort the perception of reality?

Dreams and Delusions in JJK

We already know Gege weaves Buddhist symbolism and ideas heavily into JJK. I'm not an expert in Buddhism at all, so there's a lot of it that goes over my head. I decided to look into if dreams are significant in Buddhism and boy howdy are they. Quoted directly from the source:

"Dreams can be a message from a Bodhisattva, an ancestor, or a god, The intent of the dream may be to test the dreamer’s resolve: is he non-retreating (avaivartika) from Bodhi (enlightenment) even when sleeping? The purpose of the dream visit may be to communicate information vital to the dreamer’s well-being. The Buddha himself had five dreams of catastrophes, falling stars and worlds in collision just before his enlightenment. The dreams were sent to him not by a benevolent Dharma-protector, but by an malevolent sorcerer, intent on disrupting the Buddha’s samadhi and preventing his awakening."

In summary, (correct me if I'm wrong) dreams appear to be seen as another state of being just as valuable and impermanent as reality.

There's also this other bit I'll quote directly.

"The most common use of dreams in the literature of the Mahayana, or “Northern School” of Buddhism in China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam is to see dreams as a simile for sunyata, (emptiness) the hollow core at the heart of all component dharmas (things). For example, in the well-known Vajra (Diamond) Sutra, the Buddha taught that:

“All conditioned dharmas, are like a dream, like an illusion, like a bubble, like a shadow, like a dewdrop, like a lightening flash; you should contemplate them thus.”"

That's starting to sound like what Yuji's Domain does, right? He projects memories that did happen and mixes them with delusions and dreams. Sukuna and Megumi both experience this in full.

It's incredibly suspicious that it hasn't been named yet. Yuji is the son of Kenjaku who has a domain based on the Womb Sutra/Realm...which is paired with the aforementioned Diamond Realm to encompass the entire Dharma. It's very likely this is what Yuji's domain is—a realm of dreams and reality combined as one.

Unreality Runs in the Family

When Sasaki Setsuko "wakes up" as the Culling Games begin, Kenjaku explains her situation with this:

What follows is a sequence that cannot be described as a dream. It seems to be a blend of reality and hallucinations. But that's not anything strange, Sukuna does it too with Kashimo in reverse.

As you can see, both the positions of the characters and even the backgrounds change suddenly from reality to ??? and from sequence to sequence. It's all incredibly dream like.

Another strange thing about this space is Kenjaku creating it as a part of an escape route Binding Vow. You know, the kind Sukuna uses for Malevolent Shrine.

What I want to draw attention to here is this reality-dream state somewhat requires consent (in the loosest possible definition) to appear. The person entering this state has to desire it themself. We see this with Jogo and Gojo who are mutually interested in having a relationship of somekind with Sukuna. (Same with Kashimo.)

(It's also very hard to tell if they are dead or still in the process of dying during this.)

This is where the delusions Yuji projects differ. They are forced onto others when he is near death or severely injured, seemingly as a defense mechanism.

And would you look at that...the syntax is identical for Todo and Choso's Brother Yuji Delusions. "At that moment, a memory was born inside X's brain...of a past event that never happened." It's kind of like how Yuji replaces Gojo in Megumi's memory to reach him. It's also very strange that Sukuna, Choso, and Jogo go "What is this?" to this in-between space.

My point here is that Yuji having access to this space has been hinted at since the start of this manga and that it was inherited it by blood. (Totally Not Kenjaku showing up with Takaba Mr. Reality Warping CT in JJK 270 supports my case too I think.)

What does this mean for JJK 268–270?

The battle ended in JJK 268. Of that I'm certain. What I no longer know is if anyone survived.

A common complaint about Sukuna's death is his lack of an afterlife scene. Everything ended so abruptly. And then Megumi wakes up.

It's so jarring in out of place. ...But that's how all scenes involving the space between dreams and reality begin. Sasaki Setsuko "wakes up" once and then again. Most of us have experienced those kind of dreams right? (They made a whole movie about it called Inception which is based on the movie Paprika.)

There's one other thing I need to draw attention to. Yuji's Domain shattered after Sukuna cast Domain Expansion (DE).

When a sorcerer withdraws their domain voluntarily, it does not shatter. Gojo has demonstrated this for us in quite clearly.

When a domain is broken by force, it will shatter and shards will scatter. When a domain is withdrawn, no shards are left behind. Yuta uses these facts as a part of his plan. In JJK 252, it's revealed by Kusakabe that Yuta shatters his own domain on purpose to trick Sukuna into thinking he won.

What this means is that some kind of violent action needs to be taken to shatter a domain. Yuji's domain is massive and his attacks only targeted Sukuna. What could've shattered his domain all at once? He's not had the time to practice shattering parts of it like Yuta.

Gojo has shown us what a uniform domain shattering looks like—it happens when Malevolent Shrine activates. (Please note that the sfx used for Sukuna breaking Gojo's domain is カシャア. It's the same one used for Yuji's domain shattering.)

I'm proposing that we've been in unreality since the end of JJK 266. Sukuna and Yuji are both severely injured, on the verge of death, and have a connection with each other. These are all conditions that trigger the space between dreams and reality.

And I must remind you that Yuji first triggers this event with Todo after a severe head injury. Right before Sukuna casts his domain, they do this to each other.

Everything that has come after has been perfect for Yuji to a unbelievable degree. Everyone whose death was uncertain is alive and the living are getting exactly what they wanted. The effort behind it and the logistics are all missing. And yes a rushed ending can explain that, but that too can be part of the ruse.

Another massive complaint is that mourning has not occurred. Not for Gojo or Choso despite how much Yuji cherished them. It's like they're being willfully forgotten by the cast despite being crucial to their success in Shinjuku. It feels out of character, especially since Yuji is of the few that showed concern for them no matter what.

But if this is a delusion on the brink of death designed to bring happiness, why would Yuji think of the dead? He's always been so avoidant with it. When his grandpa is dying and trying to talk about his parents, Yuji tells him to shut up. When Nanami dies, he thinks of him then and then never again directly leading up to his talk with Sukuna. When Megumi tries to discuss Nobara's fate, Yuji ends the conversation as quickly as possible.

The only people in this world are the ones who may or may not be dead. He saw Yuta in Gojo's corpse. The only way that can happen is if Gojo is dead. Yuji has no choice but to believe it. Choso burned away before his eyes. Yuji has no choice but to believe it. He went through some of Megumi's memories and saw Tsumiki's corpse. Yuji has no choice but to believe it.

And since Tsumiki is the only person Yuji wasn't close with, she's the only death that has been outright acknowledged. But not for too long! That would make Megumi sad.

Another complaint is that Sukuna really didn't kill anyone in the final battle outside of those two and Kashimo. The dudebros call it Disney Kaisen. But the fairytale-like idea that everyone is ok? Todo was the one who put that idea in Yuji's head.

And Yuji has always been one to fall to story-like logic when things look like they're finally wrapping up.

"And then everything will be just fine." (Yuji before the worst possible outcome for both him and Megumi happens.)

This is similar to the line Gakuganji uses in JJK 270. "Everything is fine." This line is the whole reason I sat down and wrote this all out without stopping. I know Gakuganji. He'd never say that. This man has been in a state of worry over Jujutsu Society since his first appearance. He doesn't even fully believe in Gojo's cause as someone who values tradition. He's a stickler for details and will do everything in his power to ensure stability. For him to toss Sukuna and Tengen's remains in a shrine and call it a day? Who is that? He's changed but not that much.

And so I compared the raws.

It is very much the same 大丈夫 (Daijoubu). These are Yuji's words.

What I'm proposing is that JJK 267–270 are Yuji's delusions of the happiest possible ending. It's a picture perfect little end where all the trauma and death has no effect on the living and people move on like nothing happened. I don't know if this means he's dead or if Megumi's dead or if they're all dead. But what I'm seeing now? I don't think it's real.

Reexamining JJK 269

CW: Brief discussion of suicide.

Even if this turns out to be a part of the smokescreen, I'm always going to hate JJK 269. But I do want to give it some grace under the assumption this chapter titled Examination (which can also be translated as Reflection) is about Yuji's guilt. Both him and Megumi's tbh. I think their feelings for each other and their situations are driving these delusions. That's one thing about this space that's real—the feelings behind them.

Yuji has a lot of guilt surrounding his existence after ingesting Sukuna, Megumi does too. Straight up Yuji has been seeking death over it since JJK 9.

He struggles to forgive himself for being the centerpiece to violence he had little to no control over. The only thing that upsets him more than that is knowing that his death will break Megumi's heart. He doesn't want Megumi to feel any guilt for it whatsoever.

The kicker is, Megumi already knows Yuji is planning to die. And he wants to do everything to rid him of that guilt. Up until they connect inside of Yuji's domain, they were unaware they shared the same goal for each other.

And that's what JJK 269 is. It's a very cold and harsh breakdown that allows them to forgive themselves. Blame is passed around and ultimately pinned on a combination of Gojo and Kenjaku. (It's really weird Sukuna isn't blamed either, but that's not the point of this for now.)

Kusakabe's comment is especially harsh. Telling Yuji point blank he should've died and that both sides on the issue were valid? He may have believed that to an extent, but he made a point of not telling it to his face. Why have a whole chapter discussing how kind he is only to turn around and do this?

If this is all a delusion, a manifestation of Yuji's guilt and trying to absolve himself of it for Megumi's sake, that makes sense. This version of Kusakabe is what Yuji feels guilt over the most—Everyone's lives being better if he died.

In the same breath Kusakabe tells them to solely blame the adults. It's very reminiscent of Nanami telling Yuji that being a child is not a sin.

It should also be noted that every single time Megumi tries to apologize for being possessed, he's stopped. Maki tears into Yuta without checking in on him, but she asks if Megumi is ok and tells him to not blame himself. JJK 270 is full of this too. He tries to apologize to Tsumiki at her grave and Shoko tells him not to sweat it. He tries to apologize to Hana and she hits on him instead.

This delusion is crafted out of love. It allows Megumi to live in a world where he can move on from the guilt surrounding his possession and saving Yuji. It's all Yuji has ever wanted for him. And now that Yuji knows Megumi wants him to forgive himself, he has no choice but to do that too.

It's a perfect ending for Megumi that's too good to be true.

It must be a dream...

There's another thing I can't reconcile about JJK 269 unless it's a delusion—Todo's explanation for Yuta's plan. It's another one of those glaring contradictions.

In JJK 269 Todo claims Boogie Woogie can't target Maki. But in JJK 259? Todo makes plans with Mei Mei knowing that it works with her.

Either Todo lied...or Yuji never fully knew the plan and that Boogie Woogie could target Maki. Otherwise she would be dead. Her surviving Sukuna's flames would be impossible.

I've already talked about how Yuji believing those who may or may not be dead are alive is Todo's doing. He's always been the one to save Yuji from his breakdowns. But let's talk about his speech in Shibuya.

"Looking for meaning or logic in death...can at times defile the memories of those we've lost!"

Everyone who has read these past 3 chapters has really felt the defiling of Gojo's memory. And it was all in service to a strange logic that helped them cope with all this death. Acknowledging how massive Gojo's sacrifice was would riddle both Yuji and Megumi with immense guilt, so it's best to ignore it for Megumi's sake. (And perhaps that's why Yuji replaces Gojo in that memory.)

"What have you been entrusted with? You don't need to answer right now. However... Until you find your answer, never stop moving."

In a way, JJK 269 is an answer to the question Todo proposed. Yuji was entrusted with saving Megumi. Saving Megumi requires Megumi and Yuji forgiving themselves. And Yuji won't stop moving until it's done. All these time jumps and rushed developments are Yuji moving Megumi forward. He's getting that happy ending even if it's to the detriment of everything else.

What about Sukuna?

When Sukuna respects his opponents and they have a connection, he gives others these dreams before they pass. He's been very impressed by Megumi since JJK 9. It's not out of the ballpark for him to allow Megumi to die satisfied in the way Gojo did. Yuji also seems to understand that Sukuna was manipulated by others just as much as he was. I think that's why Sukuna is spared of the blame for the most part.

I don't think Sukuna won. He's probably dead. But he did warn Yuji not to underestimate him. I think the worst absolute last fudge you to Yuji he could give is this happy ending dream before ripping it all away as he dies.

In Conclusion...

I'm not sure that we're going to get that happy ending. Reggie Star warned us not too long ago.

"...it all comes down to a sorcerer's lies."

Reggie is a lot like Sukuna here, outwitted by modern sorcerers and dying to someone he loathes. Sukuna is good at tricking people. He let Gojo think he won before tearing it all away. Yuta did the exact same thing to him. Or did he?

"Can you do me a favor? After all, you've killed me. Let fate toy with you, become a clown, then die."

If the last 3 chapters are delusions...Megumi will be playing the part of a clown.

Gege said the manga would end with either 1/4 or 3/4 of Yuji, Megumi, Nobara, and Gojo surviving. This of course, could be changed throughout its development, but Gege said the manga is ending in its original vision. There's a real chance that it's only Yuji or Nobara surviving.

Remember, Gege is a troll first and foremost. Somehow Gojo was revived, but in the worst way possible (Yujo). Somehow Gojo did tell Megumi about Toji, but in the worst way possible (dead man's final letter).

Gege also said this about the final chapter:

"I am working hard to create a final chapter that will (hopefully) satisfy as many people as possible who have supported Jujutsu Kaisen. So everyone, please bear with me!"

I can't think of a better way to appease everyone than by making the last 3 chapters nothing more than dream.

[fellthemarvelous]

I get that the bookshop fire was traumatic for Crowley because he thought he lost Aziraphale.

I keep seeing people say they want Aziraphale to know what it would feel like to lose Crowley, but I'm pretty sure my eyes weren't the only ones open when this happened...

Right?

"And that was the last I was to see of Crowley for some time."

Aziraphale has lost Crowley. To Hell.

He could do nothing to stop what happened in Edinburgh, and I can't imagine that he didn't fear he'd lost Crowley for good here.

Aziraphale has experienced more heartbreak than some fans care to even acknowledge. He exists in constant fear of losing Crowley to Hell again. AGAIN.

We saw Aziraphale save Crowley from Hell in 1941 with the human magic trick he used on Furfur.

Aziraphale was the one sitting in the bathtub of holy water after the Notpocalypse, knowing this was the reason he'd been so scared to hand Crowley his own thermos of holy water in the first place.

He's lost Crowley to Hell before and he will do anything to prevent it from happening again.

That's the impact Edinburgh had on Aziraphale. This is the impact that losing Crowley had on Aziraphale.

[fishofthewoods]

I see a lot of people clowning on the people of Pelican Town for not repairing the community center themselves or clowning on Lewis for embezzling and. like. Those criticisms aren't entirely unfair. But I think instead of coming at it from a perspective of "why can't the townspeople do this" we should be asking "why and how can the farmer do this?"

Like. Think about it. The farmer arrives in Stardew Valley on the first day of spring. By the first day they're obviously different. By day five the spirits of the forest who haven't been seen by the townsfolk in years or generations are speaking to them. By the second week they've developed a rapport with the wizard that lives outside town.

In the spring they go foraging and find more than even Linus, who's spent so many years learning the ways of the valley. Maybe he knows, when he sees them walking back home. Maybe he looks at them and understands that they're different, chosen somehow.

In the summer they fish in the lakes and the ocean for hours on end, catching fish that even Willy's only ever heard of, fish that he thought were the stuff of legend. They pull up giants from the deep and mutated monstrosities from the sewers.

In the fall, their crops grow incredibly immense; pumpkins twice as tall as a person, big enough that someone could live inside. The farmer cuts it down with an axe without even batting an eye. Does Lewis wonder, when he checks the collection bin that night and finds it full to the brim with pumpkin flesh? What does he think? Does he even leave the money? Does he have the funds to pay the farmer millions of dollars for the massive amounts of wine they sell? Or is it someone--something--else entirely?

In the winter, the farmer delves into the mines. No one in Pelican Town has been down there in decades. No one in living memory has been to the bottom. The farmer gets there within the season. They return to the surface with stories of dwarven ruins and shadow people, stories they only tell to Vincent and Jas, whose retellings will be dismissed by the adults as flights of fancy. People walking by the entrance to the mines sometimes hear the farmer in there, speaking in a language no one can understand. Something speaks back.

The farmer speaks to the the wizard. They speak to the spirit of a bear inside a centuries-old stone. They speak to the shadow people and the dwarves, ancient enemies, and they try to mend the rift. They speak to the Junimos, ancient spirits of the forest and the river and the mountain. They taste the nectar of the stardrops and speak to the valley itself. They change Pelican Town, and they change the valley. Things are waking up.

And what does Evelyn think? She's the oldest person in the valley; she was here when the farmer's grandfather was young. (How old *is* she, anyway? She never seems to age. She doesn't remember the year she was born.) Does she see the farmer and think of their grandfather? Does she try to remember if he was like this too, strange and wild and given the gifts of the forest?

And does their grandfather haunt the valley? He haunts the farm, still there even after his death; his body died somewhere else, but his spirit could never stay away for long. Does Abigail, using her ouija board on a stormy night, almost drop the planchette when she realizes it's moving on its own? Does Shane, walking to work long before anyone else leaves their house, catch glimpses of a wispy figure floating through the town? Does the farmer know their grandfather came back to the place they both love so much?

Mr. Qi takes interest in the farmer. He's different, too; in a different way, maybe, but the principles are the same. They're both exceptional, and no matter what Qi says about it being hard work and dedication, they both know the truth: the world bends around the both of them, changing to fit their needs. Most people aren't visited by fairies or witches. Most people don't have meteorites crash in their yard. Most people couldn't chop down trees all day without a break or speak to bears and mice and frogs.

The farmer is different. The rules of the world don't work for them the way they work for everyone else. The farmer goes fishing and finds the stuff of fairy tales. The farmer goes mining and fights shadow beasts and flying snakes. The farmer looks at paths the townspeople walk every day and finds buried in the dirt relics of lost civilizations.

The farmer is a violent, irrepressible miracle, chosen by the valley and destined to return to it someday. Even if they'd never received the letter, they would've come home.

They always come home eventually.