#that happened in the episode. No real analysis just this happened then this happened and I like it because of this.

[mariacallous]

An online course founded by far-right influencer Andrew Tate was breached by hackers, revealing the email addresses of roughly 325,000 users.

The self-described online university, known as The Real World, offers users “advanced training and mentoring” for around $50 per month. Formerly known as Hustler’s University, the platform focuses on topics such as health and fitness, financial investment, and e-commerce businesses.

“Money making is a skill,” the website states. “We will teach you how to master it.”

On Thursday, the hackers made their actions known by flooding the course’s primary chatroom with emojis they uploaded while Tate was streaming an episode of his show ��Emergency Meeting” on Rumble.

The emojis included a transgender flag, a feminist fist, an AI-generated image of Tate draped in a rainbow flag, another where his buttocks are enlarged, and the cat character used in the “boykisser” meme.

The Daily Dot was provided with approximately 794,000 usernames for what are believed to be the site’s current and former members, as well as the contents of the platform’s 221 public and 395 private chat servers. A list of 324,382 unique email addresses that appear to belong to users who were removed for failure to pay was also handed over.

In a statement on the breach, the hackers claimed that after accessing the data they were able to leverage a vulnerability “to upload emojis, delete attachments, crash everyone’s clients, and temporarily ban people” from the platform.

The Real World claims it currently has over 113,000 active users. If accurate, the site at minimum would generate upwards of $5,650,000 every month.

A source with knowledge of the breach told the Daily Dot that “hacktivism” was cited as a motive, and that the platform’s security was described as “hilariously insecure.”

Analysis of the chat logs by the Daily Dot shows everything from inspirational quotes and progress updates to complaints over the “LGBTQ agenda.”

“Maybe it’s just the MSM, but I am starting to fear for my own safety and the future of the USA,” one user wrote following the first assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. “Shootings every day, LGBTQ agenda, the matrix, I live in a very good area with a very good home life but I am sick of all this garbage happening here.”

Tate, a 37-year-old former reality TV star and kickboxer, is known best as a leading figure in the “manosphere.” The manosphere is described as a series of websites, blogs, and forums that primarily promote masculinity, although critics argue that a significant portion of the content is toxic in nature.

Tate previously described himself as a misogynist and is known for his disparaging views towards women. A dual U.S.-U.K. national, Tate is currently awaiting trial on human trafficking charges in Romania. In total, Tate is facing five legal investigations stemming from Romania and the U.K. Other allegations include those involving the rape and sex trafficking of minors, as well as forming an organized crime group to sexually exploit women. Tate has denied the charges.

The email addresses from the dump were provided by the hackers to HaveIBeenPwned, a service that alerts users when their credentials are leaked. Those email addresses as well as the chat data were also handed over to the journalism collective DDoSecrets, which hosts hacked and leaked data in the public interest.

[not-xpr-art]

forgot I was gonna go deeper into the meaning behind some of my choices in this piece and since I'm in a bit of a creative rut atm imma do it now!

so I think I've mentioned somewhere else, but fsr I keep going for blue and red in my in9 artworks and I don't 100% know why lol... but specifically in this piece I wanted to create a distinction between what is reality (the blue curtain, the blood) and what is happening in Tom's head (silhouettes of Migg and Gerri) and red and blue act as really nice contrasting colours in this case!

(also not to get all into Colour Theory, but both colours do have v specific connotations that I really wanted to emphasise the real vs fake dichotomy going on in the episode...)

in terms of the silhouettes, idk how obvious it is, but the face coming from Tom is supposed to be Gerri whereas the one from the edge is Migg (creating shockwaves as he's getting closer to Tom) with a bigger band of yellow separating the two, which I was heavily inspired by this amazing bit of analysis from @kookaburrito's review of the ep:

'Gerri is a ray of sunshine, and even though Gerri died that love Tom had for her pulls him out of a dark place and I think that's wonderful and sweet. Love saves all. Love makes you kill your toxic manipulator roomate, how beautiful.'

I just really loved the visual created there so I... created a visual based on it lool??

stylistically I wanted to keep this pretty textural since the whole episode and Tom's character as a whole has a sorta 'spiky' feel to it in my head... (which I did by not using my usual blending brush but the pen brush instead, which creates really fun distinct sections of each colour! it's a technique I don't do super often but do always enjoy how it looks in the end tbhh)

the other versions of the piece are also supposed to be reflections of Tom's splintered self; the way grief breaks you apart from the inside and distorts your entire perception of everything (in9 is SO good at doing this theme and I love it every single time lol)

but uh yeah that's about it pfft? hope this was interesting lol???

[he's not real]

an artwork based on the inside no 9 episode tom & gerri

(11/2024)

this ep is so devastating & beautiful & brutal tbhh I really hope I captured the vibe of it here!

[fictionadventurer]

It sounds like Joe and Ken focused on telling stories, stories that being stories focused on the world and characters they knew. While Pete's were more focused on delivering a message with story flavored wrapping.

This is very much the case, but the difference seems to go even deeper than that, to a fundamental difference in worldviews that affect how they approach story.

Episodes written by Joe Fallon and Ken Scarborough respect children as people. Children have been shaped by their experiences and have unique personalities. Children are curious and have brains--they are driven to explore new things and can draw conclusions from what they see and do. Children are already people who deserve respect, and like all of us, they're growing into different people as they learn new things and have more experiences. The child characters can thus be the drivers of their own stories and come to learn lessons for themselves. The child audience can relate to those characters, be drawn into the story, and learn what it's trying to teach without having every detail explicitly spelled out.

Episodes written by Peter Hirsch seem to approach children as people-in-training. They might have one or two personality traits, but instead of coming from and interacting with other elements of their background, they're just pasted on, like a sticker you can put on your Generic Child Prototype. These blank-slate children need to have knowledge poured into them so they can become Properly Educated Adults. So in his episodes, these child characters will go through their story with a question, and the adults--the real people--will tell them the information in great detail so these characters--and the watching audience--can go off into the world knowing what the writer has decided they need to know.

In Joe and Ken's episodes, flaws are funny, and can create funny conflicts that will teach the children better ways to approach problems. In Pete's episodes, flaws are horrible things that need to be pointed out, labeled, and sanded away, so these children can grow up into the perfect model of what a Good Adult should be. The first approach is engaging, and celebrates diversity of personality in a community, while the other becomes bland in the interests of shaping all the members of a community into the desired mold.

Comparing the two approaches provides a shockingly thorough lesson in how one should and should not approach writing and education. Story and character and message are all intertwined. Trying to force the message onto the story and characters makes for something bland and generic and unrealistic. Letting the characters shape the story and letting the story bring out the message makes for something much more unique, organic, engaging, and real. And yes, maybe I've come to this conclusion by spending far too much time thinking way too deeply about a bunch of shows for elementary-aged chlidren, but that doesn't mean it's not fascinating to see how, even within the same show, an writer's personality and approach to the audience can make such a vast difference in the quality of a story.

[morganmnemonic]

Having just come out of season 4, with people repeatedly saying "don't wait too long" and variations thereof to both generate a general atmosphere of creeping dread and highlight the parallel between martin's arc and basira's in which they both work with the enemy for the sake of their favorite person for just long enough to doom the world, I have to wonder what the hell they meant with this

like. what are you trying to say here?

[zeb-z]

People complaining about Star Wars shows being too slow, too much filler, like ok why don’t you just not watch? Log off Twitter?

If you can’t see any of the importance of the episodes that don’t have firefights and explosions every five fucking seconds, and complain there’s no story when the plot flies right over your head, that’s not everyone else’s problem. Yes the beginning of Andor takes a while to swing into things, and there’s many reasons for it. I frankly don’t even understand the complaints around the Bad Batch because each episode is far more obvious in its intents and still very exciting. How did any of you watch The Clone Wars?????

No one cares that you think the episodes not involving direct conflict with the Empire are boring. You’re boring. Gain some sort of common sense and think critically about the storytelling before you complain that there is none :)

[leothil]

people think tim posting that video means bucktommy endgame, i just think much like when he posted eddieana and bucktaylor on his FB page back in S4 he likes all the ships he creates because they help tell the story he's telling but we all know how much he LOVES Buddie. Also apparently the only reason he posted that vid is cause some BT fan kept on sending it to him so he probably was like OMG fine I'll post something, leave me alone.

People can think whatever they want, I just wish they were less brash about it lmao. I stand by my earlier opinion of him wanting to show that the gamble he took by making an established popular main character come out has paid off, and people are invested in the story.

Also every time I see BT I still read it as bucktaylor.

[obsidiannebula]

Deep into the ninja war in Naruto rn and I've said this a lot while watching it, but I cannot imagine having to watch this as it aired. We've been watching a couple episodes a day and it still feels like this war has been going on fooooorevvvvveeerrrr. Y'all really watched this a little bit at a time over the course of several years? Canonically it takes place over the course of like two days. How did y'all live like that

[bemusedlybespectacled]

proposing what I'm going to call Gaylor's Razor, which is: never explain normal shit as being part of a secret message that can only be decoded by over-analysis.

"These Taylor Swift lyrics are actually coded messages saying that she's a lesbian and is forced to stay in the closet! Any lyrics that are clearly about being attracted to a man are just to throw us off the scent!" Sometimes people, like Taylor Swift, are straight and write about being straight, because they are straight.

"The fourth series of Sherlock was deliberately bad because it was actually a coded message to us fans that there is a secret fourth episode that will make Johnlock canon and will actually be good!" Sometimes writers (even experienced writers who are normally good at their jobs) will write something that's not good, because no one is perfect. They're not going to waste everyone's time and money and energy creating something terrible on purpose as part of a grand master plan.

"Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the Canadian Olympic ice dancers, are secretly married (with kids)! Their public relationships with people who are not each other and them repeatedly saying 'we dated as kids and now we're just friends' are just to hide the truth! Which they need to hide for some reason! Their relationship is obvious just from their physical chemistry when competing! JUST LOOK AT THIS TWO SECOND CLIP OF HIM BLINKING AT HER!" It seems counterproductive to put all that thought into hiding a relationship that doesn't need to be hidden but then also telegraph that same relationship in front of millions of people through planned choreography.

"But BB, what about times that people really are speaking in code or hiding something due to outside influences?"

If it requires huge leaps in logic, like adding all the letters in a sentence together and dividing by seventeen and that number matches the binary sequence for the color yellow so YELLOW MUST BE SIGNIFICANT, it's not a secret code.

If it requires focusing on teeny tiny details but discards huge ones, like analyzing someone's micro-expressions but handwaving away what the person is actually saying out loud with their mouth, or focusing on one specific line instead of the entire scene or song or whatever, it's not a secret code.

If both supporting and contradictory evidence are used to come to the same conclusion (ex: when Taylor says something that I interpret as gay, that means she's gay, and when she says something that I interpret as straight, that still means she's gay and just hiding it), it's not a secret code.

Trying to apply fandom meta analysis techniques to real life is a really good way of fall into conspiratorial thinking that can be easily exploited. You can totally try to predict what's going to happen in a story or choose to interpret a scene in a specific way; you can't do that in real life with real people. That way lies the kind of nonsense that leads to shit like "this image of pizza on a children's toy is actually subliminal messaging by The Cabal™ that proves that Pizzagate is real."

[lullabyforbears]

I think another factor that really wasn't really addressed in the episode was that Applejack didn't just come on like a hammer because that's how she always is. She was very hesitant to do this in the first place and had to be flattered like mad, talk herself into it and help out Applebloom before she could even think about being candid about her fashion opinions, and was taking all her cues off Rarity. Like it was Rarity who was affirming her behavior right up until the point of major disaster, and building her up to the point of undeserved hubris. Like, it's not Applejack being a bad person, it's her being naturally prone to pride and being emboldened by Rarity's nepotism and enabling, and when she was confronted about it she got frustrated because fashion is something she just doesn't understand and before she hit the point of "fashion is ridiculous." Like there were so many stops along the way where Applejack could have course corrected, or BEEN corrected but Rarity, who she trusts as a fashion authority, told her she was all good. Like? If it feels out of character, it's because it isn't common that she's ever encouraged to get that out of line, but she legit thought she was just doing what Rarity wanted her to do- critique the designs for practicality in her blunt no nonsense way, and heaven knows she feels being too eager to please is one of her big character flaws. We saw a kind of ugly side of Applejack in that episode, but it wasn't necessarily an out of character one given the kind of monsters chronic nepotism creates and her predisposition to getting full of herself if the right ponies flatter her.

The way the Brony fandom reacted to Applejack's behavior in Honest Apple will always astound me. So many people thought that she was grossly out of character for how she acted, as if we didn't have an episode 3 seasons prior where she had a whole musical number that was basically her telling Fluttershy "I don't care if you're the animal expert. We're gonna deal with the bats the way I wanna deal with them."

Stop The Bats was essentially "It's My Way or the Highway: The Song." You would think with how much people gushed over that musical number back in the day that they would pay attention to what the song was actually saying, and what that says about AJ's character.

But nah. Honest Apple was "character assassination." I remember people thought I was crazy when I said it was the best episode of Season 7, but I'll stand ten toes down on that. It's the best season 7 episode and the best AJ episode, period.

[drchucktingle]

One of my fav podcasts is doing an episode on you and I'm shaking my head because they're not real buckaroos and they don't understand that you write because love is real and everyone should have joy in their lives. They're just making jokes and I'm like "at least buckaroos embrace what makes us happy"

yes this is interesting thing that happens with my trot A LOT. i usually will repost a podcast or interview if someone does a nice talk on chuck, but there is STILL a large portion of folks who seem to have the irony poison pumping through their veins and cant come to terms with the fact that my work is sincere

you can pretty dang quickly tell if someone is laughing AT you or laughing WITH you. i have trotted onto interviews where i IMMEDIATELY know i am getting laughed at and honestly that is okay. i cant really blame them because i know the way the culture of irony swirls around us and swallows everything up, especially online. i also know that as i trot forward and break down walls of 'low brow' and 'high brow' art there will be resistance, ALL the good trots forward will face resistance.

HOWEVER it also has to be said that a lot of this is just plain old SUBCONSCIOUS BIAS (or maybe conscious bias sometimes) against queer people and neurodivergent people. if my work was straight and i followed the neurotypical template for art i would not be treated like this. honestly the most fascinating thing to me is that these otherwise kind, well-meaning or even politically left people are just publicly tearing apart someone for, if you really wanna get down too it, being bi and autistic. i think they would be HORRIFIED is someone pointed that out, and for some reason they cant see it

i think a lot of this has to do with people thinking i am not 'real'. it is much easier to treat a 'character' this way.

but it is fine. its the trot ive got, and if you think about it, even though these folks are resistant to take me seriously and with actual respect for my work, it is actually THEIR loss. a podcast episode where you make fun of my book titles for an hour is SO MUCH LESS INTERESTING than a podcast where you pull apart what im actually doing and the intention behind my work. any time a buckaroo dives into THAT part of it, their analysis resonates across this timeline. so really its the folks makin fun that are missing out

[roxannepolice]

Supposing there was somewhere reality was a little thinner than usual? And supposing you did something there that weakened reality even more. Books wouldn’t do it. Even ordinary theater wouldn’t do it, because in your heart you knew it was just people in funny clothes on a stage. But Holy Wood went straight from the eye into the brain. In your heart you thought it was real. The clicks would do it.

~Terry Pratchett defining hyperreality better than Baudrillard ever could

[innocet]

There’s a move that RTD has been doing recently that I don’t really have a Judgement on, like I can’t say if it’s Good or Bad, but it is FASCINATING to my specific dr who preoccupations

He is (selectively, only sometimes) bringing racism that has always been present in dr who into the diegesis. I first noticed it with the Toymaker; instead of being a racial caricature in the same way his ‘65 appearance was, the 2023 toymaker is a character who poorly appropriates the signifiers of real-world cultures as part of his style of Play. He’s not just an East Asian caricature non-diegetically played by a white man. He is, within the diegesis, a white man who intentionally disrespects earth cultures by imitating and parodying them. We only see him directly do this to white/western cultures (the German, French, American, and British accents he takes), but he’s clearly textually racist to characters of color in the episode.

Racism and racial stereotype are some of the Games the toymaker plays. They’re not erasing racist production/narrative decisions. They’re placing them in a new context.

“Dot and Bubble” is the same; it recontextualizes previous adventures with all-white casts, not by reimagining them as more diverse, but by making that lack of diversity diegetic. I’ve seen some point out that previous episodes had, unexamined in the narrative, few characters of color either as a critique of “Dot and Bubble”. How can RTD expect us to notice that the cast is all-white as something with narrative significance when we’ve seen the exact same not ten years ago portrayed as a completely normal state of affairs? But I think part of the specific narrative moves that this episode is doing is that we can also examine those past episodes through this same new context. That the white Doctor, and his white companions, were not forced to encounter the circumstances that made the situation they’re in all-white, and so they did not at all engage with them. This is not to say that these previous episodes were intentionally saying anything at all about racism; they were the product of racist writing and casting, and that can’t be changed or ignored. But fan analysis as a school of thought is often far more concerned with the watsonian than the doylist, and RTD is aware of this as someone who grew up in fandom. This provides a watsonian path to exploring the racism of the show’s history, without sugarcoating or ignoring it.

It’s worth noting when he doesn’t do this as well; he seems far more willing to engage diegetically with racism than ableism, for example. Davros does not get any sort of redemption or examination as one of the only wheelchair users we see in the vastness of time and space; instead, he is simply no longer a wheelchair user. I think we should be paying a lot more attention to what gets folded in narratively and what doesn’t because it seems very clear that RTD is intent on continuing doing this and it’s something I’m keeping my eye on. Again, I don’t know whether it’s Good or Bad that this is happening, but it sure as fuck is interesting

[brettanomycroft]

Sam fumbled Gwen’s Bonzo reveal… but he’d been primed to do so

I suspect that there's going to be a LOT of conversation around Sam after this episode, and since this episode was so good that I couldn't think of a meme or shitpost, I decided I'd throw my hat into the ring and do some character analysis instead. CW: Spoilers for The Magnus Protocol episode 18, "Solo Work" under the cut.

Episode 18 finally gave us the Sam and Gwen interaction I (and I think a lot of others) have been so desperate to finally see, and boy oh boy do I have Thoughts… none of which are new per se, but Sam’s reaction to Gwen dropping the Bonzo Bomb seems to have reinforced  the way I’ve been reading (and projecting in fanfiction oops) Sam, his personality, and his motivations.

Out of everyone new we’ve been introduced to so far, Sam has by far gotten the most explicit development and conversation around his personality. Even before episode 1, folks who participated in the ARG got a preview of our favorite baby shrimp’s personality through access to the child database spreadsheet that was, presumably, used to document the results of the experiments run on children participating in The Magnus Institute’s “gifted and talented program.” From this spreadsheet, we can gather that Baby Sam is logical, empathetic, works towards the benefit of others (prosocial), and fair… but also a rule follower and highly willing to follow the lead of an authority figure, even if it is in conflict with his personal views. The picture this information paints is an interesting one, but when taken in a vacuum leaves us with an impression of Sam as someone who is kind but lacking in backbone.

This idea of Sam as “kind but lacking in backbone” is further reinforced in canon, as Alice of multiple occasions rags on him for being “noodly” and “ickle fawn” and a “baby shrimp,” all seeming to highlight that Sam has the sort of helplessness about him typically ascribed to sopping wet kittens and baby birds. And I think that if we view Sam’s outburst when Gwen brings up Bonzo through this lens alone, it’s going to seem WAY out of character for him and a downright cruel response.

Now while I do believe that Sam is empathetic and fair and, sometimes, a little helpless, I’ve been inclined to believe from early on that much of Sam’s affable self-deprecation is a way to cover or soften what can be, at times, a tendency to be hard-headed, temperamental, a little manipulative, and petty (and I’m totally not just saying that as a people-pleaser-and-gifted-kid-in-recovery who has been projecting hard on Sam since Day 1). And it’s this second batch of personality traits, the ones that make Sam so real and interesting to me, that I think set up the disaster of a conversation between Sam and Gwen.

We have definitely seen hints of Sam’s hard-headedness and manipulative leanings in previous episodes: it comes out most often around Alice, showing his stubbornness in the form of refusing to give up his lines of questioning and curiosity about what is happening in the cases and at the OIAR; and revealing his willingness to manipulate a situation the form of subtly redirecting Alice’s focus away from prying into his crush on Celia and during the mocha incident (I have, of course, already explored Sam’s manipulative tendencies in my totally comprehensive shitpost).

And we’ve even been shown at times before episode 18 where Sam can be petty, his buzzed insistence that Alice try and keep things “professional” at work after his date with Celia being at the top of the list. The case headers filed for “Putting Down Roots” and “Pet Project” also suggest to me Sam’s ability to be stubborn and petty: in both instances, Alice and Gwen suggest a different classification than the one that Sam ultimately files. In the case of Gwen in “Pet Project,” she’s dismissive of him when he tries to ask if she’s all right.

While there’s no way to know for sure, I interpret this interaction as part of the reason why Sam ultimately disregarded Gwen’s suggestion for how to file the case—she shut him down and shut him out, and the petty part of his heart couldn’t resist ignoring her recommendation out of spite. This scene also begins to lay the foundations for Sam and Gwen’s interactions in episode 18 and, I suspect, the rest of the season.

So with all of this in mind, let’s look at episode 18. When Gwen emerges from Lena’s office, Alice has just finished shutting Sam down, again. Throughout most of this season, Sam has been desperate for some validation that the cases they are listening to are real, that whatever happened to him at The Magnus Institute was real, and that him pursuing this line of questioning and wanting to find answers isn’t a waste of his time. Alice has, of course, been not-so-gently nudging him away from this line of thinking for most of the season, while Gwen has been icing him out about it up until this point. Just about the only one who has given his questioning any air has been Celia who is, conveniently, not there. Even after Alice has her very own supernatural experience that is reaffirmed in the case Sam receives, she strongly pushes back on his idea that they should investigate and pursue this further. He understands why she doesn’t want to learn more, but it’s clear that he’s still frustrated at the end of the conversation.

Enter Gwen. Here, for the first time, it seems like she’s opening up about what is going on at the OIAR, and Sam is immediately hooked, even dropping his softer and sympathetic side when Alice tries to redirect with one of her classic barbs.

After being shut down time and time again, Sam is so eager for confirmation that there is more to all of this than meets the eye. And then Gwen says the B-word, and Sam loses it.

Sam is laughing here, but honestly? I think he’s angry, and his reaction is one of complete disbelief that Gwen would set him up like this just to, in his mind, take the piss out of him. He thinks that, at best, Gwen is having a breakdown and he’s once again being shut out or, at worst, Gwen is making a joke at his expense. Now, he’s used to being the butt of a joke thanks to being friends with Alice, but despite that we’ve never heard him call her an asshole the way he does Gwen. Temperamental and petty, turning around his hurt and anger over being stonewalled again and again to lash out at Gwen with his joke.

And honestly, can you blame him? (I can’t.)

Of course this wasn’t the ideal reaction. I have been waiting for Sam and Gwen to have a serious heart-to-heart about what’s going on forever, and Sam pretty much blew that chance without even realizing it. And I would be surprised if we get an apology out of him anytime soon, not only because this interaction is likely to push Gwen away from wanting to even be around Sam, but also because he’s not going to believe that Gwen wasn’t making fun of him or that Gwen isn’t having a delusional breakdown until he sees Mr. Bonzo with his own two eyes.

I also think this conversation would have gone very differently had Celia been there instead of Alice. Sam’s slew of psychological testing suggests he’s willing to follow the leader, and in this case he doesn’t seem immune to Alice’s general dismissiveness of Gwen. He may have even been primed to lash out at Gwen in this moment because Alice is constantly ragging on her; chameleon-like, he’ll take on the shade of the strongest personality when he’s on uncertain or dangerous footing. It’s almost a guarantee that Celia would have taken Gwen seriously, not only because she’s likely from or connected to the TMA-verse of horrors, but also because it was Celia who received the first Mr. Bonzo case. And had Celia been there to temper the disbelief, Sam would have absolutely been ready to hear Gwen out in full. I honestly cannot wait for Celia to be back in office; she’s going to walk in to these new, rancid office vibes like Troy from Community walking into the whole room on fire while casually carrying the pizza.

So, what do I think this means for the rest of the season? Well, the title of this episode seems telling: Solo Work. Gwen and Sam’s respective desires for their experiences to be validated and their goals to be taken seriously paired with the seeming dismissiveness of those around them are going to push them along their separate paths, dangerously alone. And I suspect that it is only going to be Celia or, more likely, an encounter with Bonzo, that is going to put them back on the same path—if it happens at all. Good luck, babes!

[twilightcitysky]

Everything Is Meant (long S2 analysis, part 1)

I cannot figure out for the life of me how to make gifs so this will have to be a gif-less essay. If anyone more tech savvy than me wants to reblog with relevant media, please do!

I've seen a lot of people saying how Aziraphale's actions in the final ten minutes come out of left field and are OOC, and when I first watched the episode I felt the same, but now I think I couldn't have been more wrong. And I don't think Aziraphale is being controlled... I think the entire season showed us exactly what was going to happen.

On first watch, what struck me was the number of plot points that seemed disconnected. I couldn't figure out how Job related to the present, or the Victorian era, or the Nazi zombies (still at sea on the zombies part tbh). I didn't know where the Maggie/ Nina subplot was going, or why we were bothering with it. Then I put my "psych hat" on and it was like seeing one of those 3D pictures come into focus. It's a psychological networking rather than a plot-driven one, which is what Neil told us to expect.

Detailed analysis under the cut, with spoilers:

I went back through the season in my head and started asking myself: why is this element there? What does it contribute?

1. Start with scene one. Why include it? Does it matter for the climax that Az knew Crowley as an angel? YES. It's actually huge. Angel Crowley was joyful, he was bursting with delight at creation, he was idealistic. He wanted to be a part of everything rather than run away from it, and that's still how Aziraphale feels. He loves being a part of things. He's a joiner. He's a landlord. He dances at clubs and he makes human friends and he learns magic. Crowley the demon doesn't seem to want any of that, and I think that's hard for Az. He wants Crowley to be free of the cynicism he thinks prevents him from enjoying life now. At some level, I think he senses that Crowley is depressed (empathy's not his strong suit but I'm sure he's aware that Crowley's in a "what's the point of it all" kind of mood; see the eccles cakes scene). He wants to fix it. Aziraphale is a fixer. Metatron offers him a chance to do that.

Another thing is that Aziraphale knows Crowley ended up Falling just for asking questions that seemed innocent. That's not okay with him. He thinks that with the two of them in charge they can actually MAKE the changes that Crowley wanted to see way back at the beginning, starting with a suggestion box.

2. Okay, now Jim. Obviously Gabriel/ Jim is the central mystery, but why does he matter? First and foremost: he's there to show Aziraphale that angels can CHANGE. Gabriel terrorized and threatened Aziraphale. Az has been terrified of him. He ordered Aziraphale's execution. And now here he is, drinking hot chocolate, doing noble self-sacrificing things, with morals that suddenly align with Aziraphale's. What an absolute game-changer that must have been! He thought Heaven was unfixable, but here's Gabriel in his shop for weeks, slowly convincing him otherwise.

Then two other things happen. First, they find out that this all happened to Gabriel essentially because he fell in love. He was fired and his memories were stolen and the only reason he recovered was because Beelzebub happened to give him the one thing that could save him. That must have seemed like incredible luck. Now, how does Aziraphale feel about memories? He lives in a bookshop that is stuffed to bursting with the records of all of human history, essentially. His memories of his time with Crowley are incredibly precious. He sees, there at the end, that everything he is can be taken from him as a punishment for falling in love. Aziraphale doesn't have a magic fly container. He'd be forever robbed of Crowley, his life, himself. It's a very real threat in his mind when Metatron intervenes.

Which brings us to the second thing. Metatron saves Gabriel. Not only that, he prevents him from being punished for loving Beelzebub and lets them both go. What better way to win currency with Aziraphale? HE doesn't want to go off to Alpha Centauri, he never has, but suddenly he sees that Metatron might protect his relationship. And he's probably the only entity with the power to do so.

So we come to two conclusions: Aziraphale, when he goes off to talk with Metatron, is feeling like maybe it's not intrinsically bad to be an angel. He believed all the angels sucked, and only God was good... but now he sees that even Gabriel can change. He met Muriel, and he likes them. (He also had a huge crush on angel Crowley, which is neither here nor there but he loves Crowley in all his forms.) So if Crowley became an angel again, would that really be so bad? In his mind, it wouldn't change who Crowley is. It would just make them both safer and allow them to be together. (He's wrong! And Crowley doesn't see it that way! But this is a key miscommunication. Aziraphale doesn't really believe that becoming a demon changed Crowley. Back to the first scene, which Aziraphale references during the Job minisode. In his eyes, Crowley is the same person (just more cynical because of what's happened to him)-- so why would it matter if he's an angel again? I truly don't think he was trying to save Crowley, or saying that Crowley would be Better as an angel. To him, it doesn't matter what Crowley is. Which is reductive and harmful, but not the same as thinking Crowley needs rescuing from himself.)

Second conclusion: he sees that an angel and demon can be in love, but they have to run away to be together. Gabe and Beelz couldn't go home again. Earth is Aziraphale's home, but after the attack on the bookshop he learned that without Heaven's protection he can't really keep them safe there. Metatron says: "Come with me, do this thing, and you can have guaranteed safety AND be with the love of your life". Poor Aziraphale wants this with every fiber of his being. All he's ever wanted was for Crowley to be safe. He's never been able to offer it. Over the past four years, he thought they were safe, but he's just learned that he was wrong.

This is getting long. Continued in Part Two!

[barblaz-arts]

Fellow Chaggie shipper, here and I wanted to ask you a question. Could you please do an analysis post on the Chaggie argument from Hello Rosie. I know this will sound weird but I can't get over the level of icy anger Charlie had towards Vaggie or how despite everything going on, Charlie is more hurt from Vaggie not being honest with her. Just angst all around.

Oh yeah sure I'd love to!

I'm not sure there's a lot I can say about that argument that isn't already super obvious, so I wanna talk about Charlie's anger because of something my brother said as we watched episode 7. He loved that episode apparently because "When they're separated, it's even more obvious that Charlie is the one who's more quick to lose her cool." Which, looking back, is actually true!(To an extent)

Vaggie and Charlie are both quite quick to anger. Charlie is just better at hiding it because she's a chronic people pleaser. Although Charlie wouldn't immediately show her anger at a person being a jerk to her specifically, she's immediately summoning fire and brimstone over anyone who hurts/insults her friends or the cause she's fighting for.

Love this lil bit in "You Didn't Know". How Vaggie is the one telling Charlie to calm down, as if she knows what's about to happen. She knows that if she doesn't at least try to reel in her girl Charlie would be spitting literal fire at a goddamn seraphim.

It would seem like such a surprising role reversal, but if you look at all the times Charlie would lose it whenever Vaggie's not there to tell her "babe, chill", then it makes sense.

But then when their fallout happens, Charlie's short temper is even more apparent. She calls Alastor an asshole to his face even though she considered choosing his support over her father's. She openly glares and rolls her eyes at Rosie when she jokes that her and Alastor look like an item even though she still kept things cordial with Valentino after he licked her arm. She flips the bird at some old lady even though she didn't take visible offense at all the demons that inserted their crude and rude selves in "Happy Day in Hell." While she was cold and subdued even when upset with Vaggie, she was explosive and in ur face when she was pissed at everyone else.

Vaggie reigned in both the girl in Charlie who dreams a little too big and the demon who's waiting to lash out in flames. It really makes me wonder if there's a difference in the kind of person Charlie used to be before Vaggie. Before she had friends to be angry on behalf of and a person to calm her down. And then, in the wake of their argument, Charlie is left with a lot of anger that is easy to ignite.

But I love love love that despite all that anger, Charlie can't bring herself to deny that she loves Vaggie with all of her hurt heart.

This little moment is one of my favorite parts in the series. My brother mentioned that this episode and episode three were his favorites because he liked the beats the dialogues followed. So he looked back--

(the man literally paused the episode to check the opening credits of ep 7 and 3. I was a little annoyed because I just wanted my Chaggie dammit! We'd make terrible youtube reactors with all the pausing and discussing mid-episode that we do...)

--and was satisfied to see that it was written by the same person, Ariel Ladensohn. Apparently she's in a sapphic relationship too and projected her own experiences whenever she wrote Vaggie and Charlie, and it must have paid off because the moments she wrote with them felt so real.

Charlie expressing her fear that even Vaggie's support and love could also be part of the lies she told was understandable considering the betrayal she felt. But immediately following that she goes "Oh that's a horrible to thing to think!" which I love even more. Even when she's understandably mad she thinks about how Vaggie would feel over Charlie thinking that of her. Because although Vaggie lied about who she is, Vaggie was always sincere about how she felt for Charlie. Vaggie's past may have been a lie, but the things she did for, to, and on behalf of Charlie were very real and held dear in Charlie's heart.

I dont have anything smart to say to conclude this. Sorry, I'm not even sure where I went here. Let's all just appreciate the smile Charlie has on her face when she thinks about Vaggie even when she's under a lot of stress I guess.

[crystalizedcryolite]

Woah woah woah what's this I'm hearing about Green hate?? Is this true? Probably not, but this is a great opportunity to explain character flaws! :D (I was saving this analysis for when the entire arc is done but whatever)

A perfect, flawless character is a boring character. What fun will there be if your character did everything right in the world, no mistakes to let them grow or problems they can learn from? This helps create conflict, which helps expand on a character and develop them further.

Green's ego problem, his whole attention and fame-obsession thing, is a part of his character for a reason. Flaws in a character makes them more realistic and relatable, you feel me?

Green is actually a really complex character, and that's something I love most about him. That's why he's my favourite.

He can be kind, he can be a cocky jerk, he can be selfish, he can be selfless, he loves his friends, he doesn't understand what he's doing to them, all of it. His character flaws make him feel real.

His wanting for a bigger taste of fame, his slowly losing himself to the world of content creation? It's realistic. It happens everyday.

I, of course, hate what he's doing to his friends, hell, I've been there before, but that's simply necessary for his character arc. When he realises his mistake, he's going to grow from it. He's going to become a better person, I just know it.

How do I know? Because we've seen it time and time and time again.

Green showing off when he wins every build battle, Green getting cocky when dodging Red’s pranks, his anger when he loses? Those flaws have been established since day one.

Except he's still a good person.

He remained loyal to his friends, genuinely loves and cares about them so very much, and most definitely the type to drop everything for them.

(I hope, if my analysing skills are any good..)

And who's the one who comforted Purple after all he's done to them?

Green.

He's still including his friends, albeit a lot, lot less. He still cares about them, he's still trying to give them some spotlight, but he doesn't understand that they don't want that. Doesn't understand yet, anyway.

Sure, he's losing himself to the taste of fame, sure he's currently filled with an ego-driven, attention-seeking drive right now, but he'll learn soon.

That's what makes a character arc so darn good. Sometimes the problem isn't an outside force, or an enemy to battle, or something to stop.

Sometimes the problem is yourself, and it's something that needs to be changed.

Maybe the whole point of this fame-chasing arc is to let Green learn more about humility, in all it's glory, and the dangers of devoting your life to giving content to a bunch of strangers.

Or maybe not, who knows? There's still two episodes for the influencer arc, after all.

I can't wait to see how Green's character arc goes for it :D

(I don't mean any malice towards anyone, by the way! This is just me analysing Green's character :>