#opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.“

[p4nishers]

one of the most important things terry pratchett has taught me is that it's okay to be angry. no one has ever said that to me before. he taught me that anger was an engine. that you can use that anger. that it goes hand in hand with love. he taught me to never underestimate my anger, because it's one of my strongest points. he taught me genuine anger was one of the world’s great creative forces. he taught me i shouldn't be fighting my anger, but what caused it. he himself said rage underlines everything he wrote. i never heard anger talked about so openly like that before and it's freeing, i suppose, to realize you are truly, truly not alone in your rage at the world. you never were.

[mafaldinablabla]

Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.

[honeybeebabeblr]

Oh god the anger interview of Neil Gaiman talking about Terry Pratchett seems relevant. Maybe Aziraphale’s anger is purposeful and not quite as rash as I am thinking. Hmmmmm.

Some quotes:

He sat in the back of the cab beside me white with anger, a non-directional ball of fury. I said something, hoping to placate him. Perhaps I said that, ah well, it had all worked out in the end, and it hadn’t been the end of the world, and suggested it was time to not be angry any more.

Terry looked at me. He said: “Do not underestimate this anger. This anger was the engine that powered Good Omens.” I thought of the driven way that Terry wrote, and of the way that he drove the rest of us with him, and I knew that he was right.

There is a fury to Terry Pratchett’s writing: it’s the fury that was the engine that powered Discworld. It’s also the anger at the headmaster who would decide that six-year-old Terry Pratchett would never be smart enough for the 11-plus; anger at pompous critics, and at those who think serious is the opposite of funny; anger at his early American publishers who could not bring his books out successfully.

The anger is always there, an engine that drives.

And that anger, it seems to me, is about Terry’s underlying sense of what is fair and what is not. It is that sense of fairness that underlies Terry’s work and his writing, and it’s what drove him from school to journalism to the press office of the SouthWestern Electricity Board to the position of being one of the best-loved and bestselling writers in the world.

Then this one from Wyrd Sisters

“Genuine anger was one of the world’s great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn’t mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.”

Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters (Discworld, #6; Witches, #2)

One thing I haven’t seen talked about much is how fricking angry aziraphale is now, and sometimes with Crowley. I grabbed some crap shots but I think the amount of times we see him angry is important because it’s leading him to make rash decisions and be a bit hurtful

He isn’t just listing off years for the apology dance here. He is frustrated.

This is after crowley has rejected the offer of going with him to heaven and all the follows, almost whiplash from how happy he’d been thinking he’s found a way to be together and ‘fix’ heaven. It’s not all being heartbroken, he is angry.

This is a non-Crowley related incident but he’s still just done with all this shit.

But it makes me wonder now about the past 4 years. Has he been increasingly worrying? Has he noticed crowley’s anger and sort of depression and feel helpless in fixing it? Crowley never told him he was living in his car, (from NG recently) but did aziraphale know and was just waiting for Crowley to tell him so he can help without overstepping? Same with shax- he doesn’t seem to know them at all, does aziraphale know crowley’s been meeting up with shax so much?

And about shax. She mocks aziraphale in nearly ever interaction. Furfur does the same. At a contrast, some of the angels are almost courteous to Crowley. Is aziraphale just getting it on all sides recently?

There’s deserved anger and righteous anger and panicked anger and disappointed anger frustrated anger and grief anger and it feels like aziraphale is dealing with all of it against everyone but a handful of humans these days.