Rewatching Garrow’s Law for the first time in years and trying not to grind my teeth down to the gums at the state of the costuming, which looks as though someone went through the eighteenth century section of Angels pulling out bits at random and then shoved them all together. People are wearing a mishmash of styles from different decades, often all at once!

Why is Garrow dressed about thirty years out of date? Why is Lady Sarah (or rather Lady Hill, as she should be addressed since the title is her husband’s) running around town minus her chemise so effectively without underwear (or a footman or maid but that’s another matter)? Why do hardly any women seem to own a cloak or shawl, or wear a hat out of doors? Why do none of them wear a cap indoors? And why are so many men wearing frigging periwigs in the 1790s?!!

Argh!

The more it settles in, the more I understand Aziraphale’s shock at Crowley’s no. Crowley is the one who’s always wanted to ask Heaven his questions. Crowley is the one who’d planned to talk them into mercy. He’s the one who’d taught Aziraphale to stay with Heaven for safety’s sake, to go along with them as far as he could, for the chance to help Earth. He’s the one who told Aziraphale it was time to stop going along with Heaven when it came to Armageddon — they had to take a stand and try to change the outcome. And now Aziraphale sees a chance for them to do exactly that, all of that. He remembers how delighted Crowley was when he talked them out of trusting the Great Plan. He stopped them with a question! And now they say they trust him — that they’ll let him lead them! He believes he’s gotten to do what Crowley never did — ask those questions and get a response, and a wholly welcoming one. He thinks he can bring Crowley into a Heaven that wants to learn to love Earth. He thinks they can make space for mercy. And that the joy that was Crowley’s when he still believed he could ask his questions could be Crowley’s again! He saw him all alight and glad, once, guiding Creation into beauty. It’s all Crowley wanted then.

He hasn’t yet understood it’s not what Crowley’s wanting now. He doesn’t know that Crowley’s found that human life is sweeter — that Crowley only wants to love the world with two feet on the ground; and only with him there. Crowley would be as glad to watch Maggie and Nina love each other, and grow his plants, and guard his angel, as he ever was with the engine of the nebulae in his hands. And he still will be, once Aziraphale understands it’s all he wants too, and that together they have the power to make it so.

Just to clarify my thoughts (since I've had a number of people ask me about it) re: Job and cursing God. There's a big difference between cursing God as used in Scripture and how we generally would think of cursing at God today.

Cursing someone, in the Bible, has a lot of depth to it. It's not just saying "screw you " in anger, it's got a sense of forsakenness to it. It's the opposite of a blessing, a removal of blessing. If the blessing is presence, your face shining on the person you're blessing, then a curse is absence. In some translations, Job's wife tells him to "renounce God and die," which I honestly think makes a lot more sense to modern ears.

Job says a lot of unpleasant things to and about God in his anger and grief. So do the Psalmists. A number of the Prophets. So can we. God can take it if we come to him with honest expressions of our emotion, including those not-so-nice ones directed at him. I don't think there's anything wrong with getting mad at God and saying, "How dare you, you bastard" when you suffer unjustly. You can say much worse, I think, without sinning, though I don't feel particularly inclined to give examples. But as long as it's an honest expression of your heart, I think you're doing exactly what prayer is for. You're presenting him your heart with an open hand. He can use that. Opposite of love is not hate but indifference, etc.

Job doesn't renounce God. Neither should we. But I think when you're truly suffering, you're gonna have those feelings toward God either way. He'd rather you address them with him directly than try to avoid them. Cursing at God in the modern sense is actually a great way to keep the relationship strong and not end up cursing/renouncing him in the Biblical sense.

Small little varigo doodles because I was bored and I love them :D

winter deku

i despise and detest how mental health / trauma is treated in lo and more specifically how it only becomes trauma in relation to hp

hades claiming zeus “wasn’t scarred” by kronos and apollo making a quip that zeus was the “least damaged from the war”

demeter not only being abused by every man she’s familiar with but also being gaslit / disrespected to such extent she can’t even approach her sisters for help

thanatos apologizing to his abuser

minthe getting ripped apart for being the victim of a groomer and rightfully pointing out she’s not okay with being cheated on

hera’s trauma with kronos only being brought up as a kind of comparison / segue into persephone’s

artemis’ very clear grief at being lied to by her family and finding out her brother is a rapist

literally NONE of these get addressed as trauma in the narrative and if they do it’s ALWAYS as either blaming them for their own grief or turning it into another hades and persephone love fest

releasing this from the hj discord dungeon because the public populace was in agreement also i'm chronically offline on tumblr and need to fix that for my chronically online ahh

On the subject of gotham county line and batman noel and so on and so forth it’s pretty frustrating (from a watsonian pov) that anytime Bruce hallucinates Jason being loving/ caring/helpful/compassionate towards him it’s always as robin and never as his current self

feeling bad about my art lately. will probably not post for a while. but i wanted to at least dump some stuff here before i retreat into my hidey hole

I hate the war arc

And there she stood. It seems the stars had been kind enough to at least give her the decency of a normal appearance. She stood there, her tail gently swaying as he walked in her direction. She smiled, the stars in her form glowing a little brighter at the sight of him. He never realized how much he had missed seeing it. Seeing her. If not for the current state of things, it was as though the incident had never happened at all. It had though, and her eyes were the proof.

I have heard some people say that you had a harem ? Did you ?

Iroh being a lazy womanizer damaged the family's public image irremediably, I see. Some of us have honor. I was busy ruling a country and trying to expand our Empire to finally fulfill the dream of my ancestors. I definitely had no time to pursue women (like Iroh). I was also not only a proper Prince, but a married man too. You should be asking Ursa if she didn't have more playthings hidden somewhere apart from Ikea.

Levi waking up from a dream, a dream where Erwin lives, crying alone now in his room. He knows it’s a dream, a dream that could only have happened in some sort of alternate universe. That’s what makes it so sad.

historically accurate trip to clifton's cafeteria!!!

[progress shots under the readmore]

the sumeru archon quest popped off. I started the second act and I just HAD to finish it today because I was so engrossed. this feels like a big step up from inazuma's wobbly writing, and it's also a more interesting and ambitious plot than mondstadt and liyue had. I particularly like that the traveller feels a bit more...engaged? Like an actual character? In the other nations, the traveller has kind of been a bystander. while I wish they would commit to giving them more voiced lines, the sumeru storyline feels more geared around them. With the other nations, it often felt like the plotlines could progress in almost the same way whether the traveller was there or not. this time, they have clearer and more specific motivations: it's obvious why they want to find the dendro archon - specifically the god of wisdom - and ask her questions about their sibling. their relationship with dunyarzad is also developed enough to provide secondary motivation, too - she feels like a much more successful, developed npc in comparison to teppei, who we actually get enough time with to care about.

all of the characters are introduced at a nice pace, as is a lot of the worldbuilding. I like that we meet new characters with each new area - collei and tighnari for the forest, dehya, nilou, dunyarzad and nahida for sumeru city, alhaitham and dori for port ormos. it breaks it up well and stops it from feeling overwhelming. the fact that the first act lays the groundwork for how sumeru works - the eremites, the akademiya, canned knowledge, the akasha, etc. - means that second act can delve into these concepts more thoroughly without being too confusing. I love how creative and weird the second act was, too! I wasn't expecting them to go with a weird, time-loop type thing, and I love that a genshin storyline actually managed to throw me off and do something unexpected for a change

it's a much stronger start than sumeru had, and the fact that the archon quest may not actually be wrapped up until 3.2 gives me a lot of hope for the rest. I can't wait to see how scaramouche ends up involved. my guess is that the fatui will have some hand in the dream-harvesting that the akademiya is doing, but beyond that, I'm not sure what to expect. I'm very excited, though

also alhaitham is a sussy bastard. I could fix him but whatever's wrong with him is much hotter

nobody in this story is the good guy, but like, fuck woolies and coles lol