#trauma happened hell ye

[obkkseeker]

youve changed man, what happened

[incorrectfatui]

one thing I find really interesting, and kind of sad, about Scaramouche/Wanderer, is that, despite currently being in his healing era, he's still concerningly nonchalant about a lot of his backstory. Let's take Dottore for an example. The Wanderer says, in hs voicelines, something along the lines of being disappointed that he has destroyed all his segments, because he would have liked to destroy them by himself, and in Inversion of Genesis, he says he will seek revenge on Dottore eventually. Should be a sign of him confronting his trauma, and to an extent, it is, but the way it's portrayed in game makes it seem like his desire to get revenge on Dottore is primarily motivated by what happened to Niwa. Which is valid, it was Dottore who did that, but it's a little concerning that we don't really hear Scaramouche/Wanderer complain about the whole human experiment thing, no? Sure, he agreed to it and states that he participated voluntarily, but it's a little disconcerting that Nahida describes it as genuine torture, and for Scaramouche, it's kind of just a secondary thing. Of course, if we go with the three betrayals, obviously Niwa's death messed him up a lot as well, but after Inversion of Genesis it kind of seems like getting revenge on Dottore is part of his whole self-atonement thing, since Dottore killing Niwa led to Scara eventually killing all those blacksmiths. I do wonder if they'll elaborate on any of this when we get their confrontation ingame- because I do think there will be one. I'd really like to know whether Wanderer's reasoning for revenge is really anchored primarily in Dottore's murder of Niwa, like it seems to me rn, or if we'll get some lines about the experiments as well. I think it could honestly be part of the healing process, having him want revenge for the sake of others at first, and later accepting that he can want it for himself as well. I think maybe he's still a lil hung up about the fact that his other attempts at getting revenge turned out to be him hurting innocent people, since Niwa never did betray him, so he might need to take some time to accept that he can still want revenge for himself as well

[gideonisms]

I feel like if your parents tried to indoctrinate you but the side effect was autism accommodations and the indoctrination didn't actually work, they should get a passing grade in parenting. All's well that ends well

[heyclickadee]

So, my family is rewatching Rings of Power, and since I’m the one in the family that read The Silmarillion (like a masochist), I’m the one who keeps getting asked all the questions.

[some-siren]

One of the things that spin around in the microwave of my mind is how much Crowley seems to know Heaven. Like, the dude worked there for an indeterminate amount of time and it's like he still does. Like he probably worked Upstairs for less than 6000 years right?

So why does he remember it better than the literal angel that never left. Sure he was quite high up the hierarchy, higher than Aziraphale from what we know, but WHY does he remember it so vividly/know it so well, especially if he did get his memory erased?

What did they do to him

[morningmask27]

I'm going to be bitching about Star for a while now. I'll tag them all with #asc spoilers, but really what the fuck was this book?

[trans-leek-cookie]

when I think about Geto Suguru i want to kill and torture him when I think about Mimiko and Nanako I want to kms. You give me twins who went from physical abuse to being in a cult and you don't even give them the grace of the guy who is basically Their Dad But Worse dying while they're alive? You just kill the bc. Fucking. Idk they fed him some fingers. You don't let them live without their fucking garbage dad who I want to kill and torture? You waste their potential? You waste the girls who could be really fascinating parallels to Maki and Mai? Twins with similar name schemes who suffer extreme abuse and their abusers are all massacred by one person- but while Mimiko and Nanako are everything to each other, Maki and Mai were pitted against each other and only able to connect at the last possible moment? Mimiko and Nanako were saved but Maki was saved by Mai, and then had to save herself??? I'm going to start killing innocent people at random.

[imagine-nerd]

The fucking disconnect is so real.

[feelingtheaster99]

Seeing all their backstories was really hecking cool and now all I wanna do is see some of Rosamund and Mother Goose and Pib’s stories in that same format tok

[starstaiined]

violently sobbing at almost 4am about travis martinez

[bisexualmikisayaka]

i do have to say though as much as i love guts and casca like. i’m not going to pretend their relationship is a perfect one and i’m also Very aware of what guts does to casca post-eclipse. i guess you could be like “he was under the influence of the beast! it wasn’t him!” but that comes too close to the “it wasn’t griffith it was femto!” line of thinking for me. stepping outside of the line of canon, i think it was an incredibly shitty writing choice that compromises their genuine care for one another. there are ways to make their relationship difficult without resorting to “the semi-metaphorical evil monster in me encouraged me to assault my girlfriend and i gave in” - two deeply traumatized people trying to be with one another after the worst experience of their lives is already pretty good plot fuel! and i legitimately hope that it’s brought up at some point when casca is recovered enough to talk about her experiences. it won’t be, but like... idk. i largely ignore discussing it because i don’t see it as an in-character decision for guts, but I’m Aware, Even If The Narrative Really Isn’t. 

[pan-de-queer]

their story, esp the first part of the post before same sex marriage was legalized in the usa, reminds me of this post by Filipino musican Nica del Rosario, a queer singer who was introducing her newest song

[Image ID: First picture is a screenshot of Twitter user Nica del Rosario with two screenshot images of a message written on a note app.

Second and third pictures are the message itself which reads:

The night before our flight back home to Manila after getting married in Sydney, we had to fill out an online tracing form called One Health Pass (PSA: fill this out in advance if you're traveling home so you don't get stuck in the long line of people at the airport).

As I was going through mine, I stopped at one question: marital status. It stared right back at me, almost mockingly, like it knew that despite our magical, joyful wedding just a couple of days before, I had to begrudgingly mark myself as "single".

It was a small, simple action, but it crushed my heart like a stone. It represented the reality that was waiting for us back in Manila: that the vows we exchanged in Sydney will not be honored in the place we call home. The joy of getting to legally commit ourselves to spending the rest of our lives together is mixed with the bitterness that according to the laws where we reside, that doesn't mean anything.

But to us, it means everything. Remembering that moment in our hotel room, filling out that form, spurred me to write this song. Because despite that small yet sad moment, there's comfort in the fact that we're married in Australia, in the US, in Canada, and several other countries. There's comfort in the fact that we share a love that some people spend lifetimes trying to look for. There's comfort in the life and the family that we built together.

I don't know when our laws here will change; maybe we'll be like those old lady couples in the US rushing to the courthouses on the day that same sex marriage was legalized in all 50 states. Maybe it will come in 10 years. Maybe we won't live to see it. But we have today, and our love and our family. And for now, that is enough.

"*Balang Araw" is for every person in our community who continue to hope and fight for what we stand for: to be treated as human beings, to be given the same rights as everyone else. *Makukuha rin natin ang ating "balang araw", pero sa ngayon, mahalin muna natin ang isa't isa. /.End ID]

Translations:

Balang Araw = someday

Makukuha rin natin ang ating "balang araw", pero sa ngayon, mahalin muna natin ang isa't isa = We'll also get our "someday", but for now, let's first love one another.

everytime I remember that lesbian couple that have a marble statue of the two of them embracing and sleeping on a bed together over where their graves will be because the artists didn’t believe they would be able to be married before they died, so what they couldn’t have in life they could have in death, I fucking breakdown

[lusalemaart]

🥛🍔

[whatego]

Also wtffff pay attention to me :(((

.. The (not too long lasting) urge to ghost people just because they don't give me much attention or/and don't respond to me right away, plus projecting my insecurities onto them/fearing their possible hidden judgments - is Real.

[inhonoredglory]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

____

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

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

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

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

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

[thedarklyblue]

he's so all or nothing jesus fuck