Thinking about the weird camaraderie that exists between demons but not angels in GO.
Have we ever seen two angels who are actually friends? Or even friendly to one another? We have met angels with a capacity to be friendly in general, but I think the closest we've come to two angels actually getting along would be Gabriel making a point to laugh at Sandalphon's terrible "can't have a war without War" line in S1.
Most scenes between the angels actually seem to have an undercurrent of absolute hostility. Teeth-clenched teamwork. No wonder it took them so long to notice that Aziraphale wasn't on the same page as the rest of them! The rest of them are barely on the same page as one another, either! When Gabriel goes against the majority vote, no one bats an eye at demoting him and wiping his memory. Michael and Uriel immediately begin vying for his job. The only times we've seen angels team up is when they're working together to bully someone else, like when they're trying to intimidate Aziraphale in S1 or going to the aftermath of the bookshop raid in S2.
Saraqael's overall neutrality towards Muriel is the closest we get to two angels in Heaven getting along, and it's more a lack of hostility than any kind of friendliness. At least until Gabriel loses his memories and Muriel shows up to spy on Aziraphale, and Aziraphale decides to be kind to both of them.
Demons, on the other hand, actually seem to form alliances and even friendships among one another. Hastur and Ligur are awful, but Hastur seems genuinely distraught over Ligur's death, not just fearful of suffering the same fate. Shax and Furfur conspire together and even though the 1940's investigation into Crowley's fraternizing doesn't work out for Furfur, it's not due to any double-crossing on Shax's part. Unlike the angels, who stick almost exclusively to making threats until the Metatron decides to try dangling a carrot at the end of the season, demons actually offer rewards to other demons when trying to work together. Beelzebub offers Crowley a promotion if he can bring them Gabriel, Furfur offers to back Shax up politically if she goes for the Duke position opening, and Crowley successfully stalls Hastur in S1 by pretending everything was a test and he's going to be put in charge of a legion as a reward for passing. They're still not great at socializing, but they're significantly ahead of the angels.
Of course, it's a fact that demons are awful to one another (Eric's treatment is really bad, they throw that random demon into holy water just to test it, "it'd be a funny world if demons went around trusting one another", etc) but they still seem more capable of forming friendships than the angels do.
I think that's because Hell cramps and crowds everyone together to try and increase their suffering and hostility, whereas Heaven isolates angels to decrease the odds of questioning or rebellion. Hell's methods are unpleasant, but it still ends up putting demons together, and some of those demons inevitably forge alliances and make friendships. Because as Crowley and Beelzebub demonstrate, demons are still social creatures with the capacity for love and affection, even if it's strongly discouraged and buried under nine million layers of trauma and a cultural mandate against kindness.
Angels are the same, but isolation makes is harder to form connections than overcrowding. Muriel and Jimbriel are both so eager to make friends, but Muriel's spent the past millennia shut in an empty office, and Gabriel has been distanced from his peers both through his position and also through Heaven's culture of fear and surveillance. He only breaks away from it when he finds something that's stronger than "choosing sides" (stronger than the fear of being rejected by Heaven and Falling, in fact strong enough that Falling seems worth it if he gets to be with someone he loves). Both Muriel and Gabriel are only able to start forming connections when they're away from Heaven.
I just think it's interesting that demons, despite being supposedly devoid of love, have an advantage in forming relationships compared to angels. Angels are supposed to love, but have far fewer opportunities to actually do so. Demons aren't supposed to love, but they make connections anyway.
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Today, when I was putting a quilt on a quilting frame, my mind wandered to Dragon Age and I couldn't stop thinking about this question because I couldn't answer it, even after like 15 minutes of hard thought.
So I turn to you guys.
Why do you think Solas likes Mythal?
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y’all i was thinking about the bees last night while falling asleep and imagining a scenario where they actually get to discuss their feelings post-confession, now that the cat’s out of the bag and they’ve had their tongues down each others’ throats
and i just imagined yang confessing that she’s liked blake since beacon, but knew that blake was going through some shit and didn’t want to come off too strong or catch blake at a bad time, instead just wanting to be there for her however she could. and also, yennow, the sun of it all, and yang worrying blake might not even be into girls, before blake reassures her by saying something about having a thing for “hot blonde bombshells”
and that got me imagining how fucking adorable yang would be if she heard blake call her hot and be all “you think i’m hot? 👉👈👉👈” god i need this
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i think what ticks me off the most about recent changes staff have been making to tumblr is they keep insisting it's necessary bc they need to draw in and retain new users or they're NEVER going to keep things going, so their solution is to... add a bunch of annoying and unintuitive shit that A) isn't going to appeal to anyone, let alone new people, but also B) piss off the existing user base.
like, im sorry, between the two demographics who do you think is going to ACTUALLY care enough about tumblr to use it every day and pay for things like no ads, or your merch based off decade old memes? i give this site the 5 or whatever bucks it takes to get rid of its stupid ad posts in part bc they're annoying but also because i have been on this fucking webbed site for 12 years! and i don't mind giving it some money to keep it running. BUT. not if that's paying for staff's ability to add more useless/convoluted/unappealing features that dont have MY user experience in mind
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