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minervas-hand · 2 months

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Right to fear, wrong to believe

Just had a horrible realization and needed to meta it out.

How different they were before Edinburgh, when Crowley was sucked down into Hell.

Look at this flirty babygirl in the Bastille:

I mean could he climb that tree any faster?

(This is why I really like fics that place a more physical relationship here, pre-Bastille or just post-Bastille, because c'mon look at them. )

In S1 the next thing is 1862 and Crowley asking for insurance (with a cane ffs). And Aziraphale freaking out with his "fraternizing" BS. It's jarring, until we get 1827 filled in for us in S2.

@takeme-totheworld notes in this post:

Crowley sure went from "our respective head offices don't actually care how things get done" and "nobody ever has to know" to "walls have ears" FAST after Edinburgh. And Aziraphale went from looking at Crowley with hearts in his eyes to "I've been FrAtErNiZiNg" just as quickly. I'm more convinced than ever that Edinburgh was the first time Crowley ever actually got caught and punished for fucking around with Aziraphale/doing good deeds/whatever it was they yanked him back down to Hell for, and it scared the absolute shit out of both of them and changed the whole tone of their relationship after that.

Yes! - it's clear to me as well that the Edinburgh graveyard was a very bad turning point, where they both saw that Hell was listening and would intervene. And it did change their relationship drastically, for over a century and a half (really, until looming Armageddon loosened up the stakes for them).

But what about Heaven?

See the thing is, we know Azi's been worried about Heaven watching him for the past 6000 years.

But they haven't.

[GIFs posted by starrose17]

All this time, and Heaven had not seen them together. Hadn't noticed. Had not even LOOKED.

I want to mention what @starrose17 says about this here in this post:

What I love about this is her choice of words, “went back through the Earth Observation files.” This implies that these photos were already filed somewhere meaning somebody had to have been watching them which meant somewhere in the depths of the bureaucratic heaven there’s an underpaid angel clerk tasked with watching angels on Earth, and he’s been hording photos of his favourite Angel/Demon couple not reporting them to Michael because he wants to see what happens.

And that's exactly what this fic covers!: Spying Omens by @ednav

(Give this a read, it's fabulous.)

While I am here for this being exactly how that happens, the other scenario is colder and worse - there's no one watching, at all. It's just filing automatically and never seen until some Scrivener is called to pull a file.

From @fuckyeahisawthatat's comment here :

I found this scene to be quite chilling, actually. Not only is the idea of Heaven as a surveillance state brilliant (way to make “God is always watching” sound way more ominous) but this is exactly how modern surveillance states work. They don’t actively watch everybody all the time. That’s not physically possible for humans, and even if it is metaphysically possible for Heaven, it’s not a very efficient use of resources. Surveillance states watch people they deem “suspicious.” And once you’ve been put in the category of “suspicious,” they have massive amounts of data that they can comb through to collect a lot of information about you–to retroactively build a case justifying why you’re suspicious, to collect information about where you go and who you associate with, etc.

Yes.

So we either have secret collusion in the rank and file, or we have a surveillance state that is constantly reinforced to its subjects for fear's sake, for control.

(Well, it obviously could be both.)

BUT my point is… Up until Edinburgh, Hell has not been watching (or caring at least). And up until near the end of Armageddon't, neither has Heaven.

Oh, my poor Angel. Thousands of years, of denying yourself, of pushing Crowley away, of carrying around a tension that is it's own constellation.

After 1827 you might have reason, but for the 5000+ years before that?

Thousands of years and Heaven was not watching nor cared.

You were right to fear. And you were wrong to believe.

And that just breaks my heart.

#okay gonna go reread Spying Omens again because that's my headcanon now #I hope Azi tears out the Earth Observation cams or servers or whatever it is #where's Murderbot when you need a good hack #good omens meta #aziracrow #ineffable husbands #good omens

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shadesofdeviant · 2 months

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I'm so much more Aziraphale coded. Although I'm not in any way surprised haha.

Thanks for the tag @celestialcrowley! I had fun with this!

No pressure tags: @crawley-fell, @sollunaastra, @takeme-totheworld, @greenchrysanthemum20, @serpent-and-seraph, @crowleybrekkers, @crowleyholmes and anyone else who wants to try this.

#Good Omens #Aziraphale #Crowley #Tag Game #Kin Bingo #These are so much fun!#rintrash

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notagoodlad · 5 months

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Tagged by @skinnyscottishbloke - thank you!! I love these things

1. Were you named after anyone?

Not my first name, but I share my middle name with an aunt on each side of the family

2. When was the last time you cried?

I teared up last night having a conversation with my boyfriend (it wasn't anything bad, no worries! I'm one of those fuckers who tears up whenever I feel even the edge of an emotion if I'm with someone I trust)

3. Do you have kids?

2 step children, a boy and a girl

4. What sports do you play/have you played?

I have never been sporty.... but I danced for 14 years, all the way through until I graduated high school. I miss it a lot.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Naaaahhhhhhhh (she said sarcastically) ((prev, lol))

6. What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Height, eyes, smile

7. What’s your eye color?

Green

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Happy endings, however I don't mind if we take some dark twists and turns before we get there.

9. Any talents?

Singing, song recognition/lyric retention, dancing, my extremely large and sometimes pretentious vocabulary.

10. Where were you born?

In a small local hospital.

11. What are your hobbies?

Reading, singing (mostly just to myself/by myself these days), cross stitch, cooking, very novice levels of gardening and herbal concoctions.

12. Do you have any pets?

Yes, 2 baby kitty cats.. and our daughter has a hamster.

13. How tall are you?

5'6" - neither short nor tall.

14. Favorite subject in school?

English, 100%. By senior year of high school I was in 3 lit related classes in one semester (ap English, humanities, and intermediate creative writing).. and I majored in creative writing with a minor in English lit in college. I also took Classics and mythology classes for fun.

15. Dream job?

I have always struggled with this question. I have never had a 'dream job', per se. I always feared living my life in a cubical, a slave to capitalism. I lived most of my adult life like that, unfortunately, until recently. Now, accidentally unemployed, I'm trying to figure out what to do next that won't make me miserable.

No pressure tags @phoen1xr0se, @crowleys-hips, @hellogoodomens, @fellthemarvelous, @something-something-goodomens, @takeme-totheworld, @andiv3r

#my posts #about me #I love these stupid survey things and I have since the days of myspace

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tallerthantale · 5 months

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What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 3: The Case for Ineffability

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that can be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first two as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness’ or as I am putting it here, conscious!Aziraphale only has access to the beliefs that the rest of his mind, veil!Aziraphale, allows him to know about. The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays buried behind the veil, whatever arrangement best prevents a threat to Aziraphale’s sense of self and makes whatever he is inclined to do feel right.

In this post I will be mostly focusing on ineffability; its origins, its associations, and its utility. For all that we call them the ineffable husbands, I have myself and will continue to do so, ineffability belongs to Aziraphale. Crowley scoffed at Aziraphale for it for 6000 years, up until Aziraphale used it to land the final blow ending Armageddidn't. It has value, and Aziraphale brings that value to the table in his discourse with Crowley. About 3.2k words. I meant for it to be shorter, I got carried away.

Religion Without Words

At Eden, Aziraphale has probably spent some time considering Crowley's fall. Realistically I think the reason Crowley is hearing the ineffable argument for the first time at Eden is that the exposition needed to be present as Aziraphale - Crowley dialogue from the start of S1E1 for narrative reasons. However, I like taking on the headcanon that Aziraphale developed his opinions on God's ineffability as a result of Crowley's fall, as a way to try to reconcile his negative feelings about something God had done.

Aziraphale has concluded that the reason he struggles to reconcile a terrible thing happening to someone he cared for at the hands of a nominally benevolent God, is that it's all part of a grand plan he isn't supposed to be able to understand. I have never been a Christian, but from the outside this sure does look like a typical Christian rationalisation, and I believe it mostly is one. @takeme-totheworld has a lot of insightful things to say about the Christian perspective that I’d recommend reading. However, there is one bit when Aziraphale describes ineffability that stands out to me as noticeably something else.

If you are in deep in the fandom, you have probably encountered at least one of the times David Tennant has described Crowley and Aziraphale as the yin to each other’s yang. Yinyangs originated an element of ancient Chinese philosophy, and are currently a component of many different belief systems across East Asia, most prominently Confucism. However, when they get brought up by westerners, (myself included, hi, I’m the problem it’s me) it’s usually in the context of their role in Daoism.

A line from God’s narration (an the book) that sets up the thesis of the story is very Daoist coded: "most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people." This line, David’s description of their relationship, and the multiple shots in the show of the pair that are deliberately evocative of a yinyang symbol, give me the impression that the Good Omens team is deliberately working Daoist perspective into the story. The most telling bit though, is Aziraphale's description of ineffability.

Aziraphale describes God's plan as being ineffable, because "It is incapable of being put into words." Not ‘shouldn't be put into words,’ INCAPABLE of being put into words. This sounds to me like a reference to "The way that can be spoken is not the constant way," a common translation of the most iconic line of the Daodejing, understood to mean you can't describe Daoism (or the universe according to Daoism) with words. This may seem like a reach, I assure you it is not. Daoism unambiguously holds the creative commons copyright on ‘religion that is incapable of being put into words.’ It’s the only thing about Daoism that isn’t ambiguous.

However, as Aziraphale describes it, it's mixed in with the more Christian "It's not for us to understand." Daoist ineffability is about a non-sentient collection of principles of the universe that can't be communicated in words, because it just doesn't work. Christian ineffability is the supreme will of an all powerful entity that won't be communicated in words, because it’s a test of faith. The Christian approach is often to fall back onto the institutional hierarchy and do what you are told. Aziraphale looks on the surface to be following the Christian approach, but in a lot of ways he is actually taking a more Daoist approach, and that is what he will use to separate himself from the institution of heaven, without separating himself from God.

Would You Prefer an Unorganized Religion?

(This was a sarcastic sign on a church near my undergrad college many years ago, in response to a local backlash against organised religion. I found this incredibly funny, because my answer was and is an unironic, enthusiastic, YES.)

I think that for people used to organised religion with hierarchical religious authorities and formal institutions, who have experienced religion as a form of social control, it can be counter intuitive to consider the idea of a spirituality / religion that doesn't operate like that. This isn't to say that there aren't branches of Daoism that have set up structured institutional authority, but from my perspective it makes about as much sense as Prosperity Gospel Christians and Supply-Side Jesus. In any case, the anti-hierarchical flavour of Daoism is the one showing up in the subtext and it's the version that I am familiar with, so that's what I'm going to talk about.

In this world view, the full acceptance of the inability to put spirituality into words or communicate it to others doesn't function as a way to keep people in their place, it functions as the exact opposite. I can’t express the Meaning of Life in words, and neither can you. I can’t tell people how to live in accordance with The Way, AND NEITHER CAN YOU. You are literally the pope? I don’t care, you still can’t. So how does an anti-athoritarian Daoist decide how to live their life? How do you resolve it being impossible for anyone to tell you what the Daoist thing to do is? Look, if I could tell you, it wouldn’t be Daoism. The closest I can get is that it involves putting a lot of work into being at peace with yourself as you are, and being true to yourself as you are when at peace. The interaction is vitally important. Being genuinely at peace with yourself, flaws and all, gets the background mechanisms of your mind to be a lot more relaxed about allowing you to perceive clearly, and that gives you more breathing room for whimsy. Putting faith in your intuition where you aren’t at peace with yourself can fuck your shit up harder than a sideways pinapple.

Just an Angel That Likes Food

Aziraphale runs on intuition, and when he is still wrestling with his hidden conflicts behind the veil, he gets messy. When it’s about something he has made his peace with, he does rather well. Once Aziraphale realises he likes food, he doesn’t waste time agonising over it. He’s just an angel that likes food. At first he is appalled by the wine, but not after he’s tried it. Now he’s just an angel that likes wine. And cocktails with little frufru umbrellas. And music. He will go on about keeping up appearances to avoid scrutiny from Gabriel, but I really don’t think Aziraphale has any internal qualms about what it says about his existence that he likes food, tea, hot chocolate, alcohol, and music. He just likes them. He just is.*

At some point between Before the Beginning and the modern era, Aziraphale has developed the capacity to fully stop respecting what the institution of heaven says, because ineffability means no angel, archangel, Metatron, contract, permit, office, or institution can speak for God. Consider Season 1 Aziraphale having no time for The Metatron’s title; “You are the voice of God like the presidential spokesperson is the voice of the president. I actually need to speak to God.” The great plan is a bunch of words, and God plays games, so it isn’t necessarily the ineffable plan. Right after the discorporation, the angel general orders Aziraphale to prepare for war, and he's just like… nope. Bye. He prevents the war by calling Gabriel out to his face for assuming God's intentions, and Crowley only joins in after he is shocked that it worked.

Where modern Aziraphale most readily loses his internal peace is when there is a question of him being personally out of step with God, and with the hypothetical of what God would want an idealised heaven to be. Only God Herself, in all her ineffable glory, who’s will cannot be communicated in words by definition, who’s playing games with rules She won’t tell you. But then he can't ever know if he really is out of step with God? EXACTLY. If he intuitively feels like he is aligned with God, nothing the universe throws at him from the outside can ever be evidence to the contrary.

Isn't he just as bad as Gabriel then? Arguably he's worse. Gabriel admitted to himself that he didn't know God's will when called out about it. However, at least the things that intuitively feel right to Aziraphale tend not to be eradicating all life and destroying the universe, so there's that.

On an Overabundance of Optional Opinions

The solid wall modern Aziraphale has up to defend his sense of his relationship to God took time to build, and it started at Eden. As Aziraphale introduces the ineffability Concept to Crowley, the tool is still in development as far as separating himself from the institution of heaven. The scene introduces a lot of Aziraphale’s contradictory optional opinions.

He can stand by his decision to give away the flaming sword.

He can believe it's possible it was 'the wrong thing' or 'a bad thing.'

He can believe angel’s can’t do the wrong thing by definition.

He can believe Crowey is a demon now.

He can believe he has a responsibility to never do the 'wrong thing.'

He can believe what constitutes the 'wrong thing' is determined by God's will.

He can believe he is obligated as an angel to enact God’s will.

He can believe he cannot be told what God's will is.

He can believe he isn't supposed to understand God’s will.

That is a pretty messy pile of things to believe in the span of a few minutes. Some of this mess is resolved by Aziraphale simply not having contradictory beliefs in his awareness at the same time. Some of it is resolved by him finding squigly ways for the beliefs to not necessarily contradict each other exactly.

As I got into above, Aziraphale runs on intuition, that lets him have a sense of what feels right, and that gives him motivation to act without instructions. Belief follows action. He gives away the sword because it felt like the right thing to do, and now he has his reasons for that and he is invested in standing by them. Now he is worried that action could have been ‘the wrong thing’ which he is treating as a term of art for the policy position of the institution of heaven.

Aziraphale can now separate what he personally prefers from what the institution of heaven classifies as right. He prefers the universe in which he gives Adam the sword. The institution of heaven may disagree, and that would mean that Aziraphale giving Adam the sword was 'bad', but Aziraphale will still prefer the universe in which he gives Adam the sword, and can argue the point. The pro giving the sword away argument is earnest, but it also feels very defensive. If it was 'wrong,' what he prefers is wrong, and that would be 'bad' and he isn't allowed to be 'bad', he is an angel. This is a threat to his sense of self. He is panicking, and is becoming willing to grasp at straws.

In seeking reassurance, Aziraphale earnestly appreciates it when Crowley says 'you're an angel, I don't think you can do the wrong thing.' Taking that at face value is WILD, given that it is a statement made by someone who was an angel, and now isn't, because he was punished for what he did while he was an angel. While there are questions about the details of how and when turning into a demon happens that we will get to later, I think Airaphale’s current understanding of the demeaning process would include: angel commits a fall worthy act, then becomes a demon. This is how he thinks it works at the start of Uz. So as we would assume Aziraphale sees it, Crowley was an angel, did something that was ‘the wrong thing,’ and then became a demon. You would think that this would imply that it is possible for an angel to do the wrong thing.

Aziraphale’s mind has options. Either an angel definitionally can't do the wrong thing, or demons exist because angels can fall after doing the wrong thing. As long as they aren’t both in conscious!Aziraphale’s awareness at the same time, it works out. For this part of the conversation, the notion that an angel can do the wrong thing and fall for it is staying out of his conscious awareness. That lets him grab onto reassurance that he did the right thing by definition. Keeping things behind the veil is fairly normal behaviour for a mind, and if this was Aziraphale talking to another angel it would hardly be noteworthy. The wild part is managing to not have the concept of ‘demons exist because angels can fall’ in your awareness while in the midst of a conversation with a demon who fell so recently you needed to ask them what their new demon name was less than a minute ago. The incentive to believe that as an angel, he can’t do the wrong thing was very powerful. But it wasn’t enough to eliminate his doubt, guilt and shame, particularly after Adam kills the lion. That doesn’t feel right to Aziraphale, even after all his concerns about vicious animals.

An Ineffable Back Door

The real power play is ineffability. The seeds are there for Aziraphale to realise the institution doesn’t represent God if NO ONE can know God’s will, but he hasn’t fully put that together yet. “It’s not for us to understand,” is still him putting himself in his place, or it might have come out ‘it’s not for anyone to understand.’ But there is a crack in the cage destined to become an exit. Aziraphale has started thinking for himself in a way that the other angels don't, and he has come up with ways to rationalise his individual agency. He has his own opinions, and while he has trauma responses when it seems like he might get in trouble, or that a certain opinion isn't acceptable, he will act on his own where there aren't any guidelines. For now, he still tows the company line when he is given orders.

At the Flood, Aziraphale is trying to be ok with what God ostensibly decided, but he's clearly put off by it. It doesn’t feel right, but neither does disagreeing with God. He tries to focus on the positive. The rainbow will be a promise to not drown everyone again! She's just wiping out the locals... not all of them... What I want to focus on though, is that Crowley asks about the sword. Aziraphale says God didn't mention it again, Crowley says that's probably for the best. I think Aziraphale is being a bit dishonest with Crowley as God did mention it at the wall, but I think there is a degree of honesty in the fact that he doesn't seem to have been punished or reprimanded by God for it in any way. Both at Eden and at The Flood Crowley has revealed that he believes God would consider giving the sword away to have been the wrong thing. I think it's a reasonably safe headcanon that the other angels would have a similar opinion. But Aziraphale faced no consequences from God for it. I doubt Aziraphale believes he lied to God successfully. I would argue Aziraphale thinks God either approved of or was pretty indifferent to the whole sword business, and everyone else figured it wrong. However, we don't have evidence for Aziraphale thinking that way until Job, and that’s where we’re headed next.

Post 3/10

End Note 1: On Aziraphale lying to God.

Aziraphale often tells obviously pointless lies as a shame response. Consider the travel sweet, claiming to have never heard of Gabriel, ‘I don’t even like you’, ‘we don’t know each other’. As such, I don’t take his lies to God at Eden to mean he doesn’t believe in God’s omniscience. It could be that he typically believes God is omniscient, and that got stuck behind the veil in a panic, but I honestly read it more as a compulsive behaviour that’s not even engaging with the question of if his lies are believable.

End Note 2: On Aziraphale’s Character Arc.

I see Aziraphale’s journey as a very Daoist coded one, and there is good reason to set it up that way. Good Omens is largely about deconstructing black and white thinking and black and white morality. Crowley represents someone assigned into the category of being evil, behaving in a way that undermines our understanding of the concept, which lets us understand him as not actually evil, and we want him to not actually be evil. We love him for it, it’s a great story. It is also a much easier narrative to process than the mirrored version in Aziraphale, which requires us to want him to grow as a person towards a goal that isn’t being good. Now, obviously a huge chunk of what’s happening is that heaven doesn’t represent actual good, they represent fake good. The thing is, they represent fake good because the concept of good and evil is inherently flawed to begin with ON BOTH ENDS, that’s what the Good Omens narrative is pointing out.

We understand Aziraphale’s mistake at the end of Season 2 comes from him trying to fix the system instead of trying to dismantle it. I agree. His mistake was that he looked at fake idealised good, and wanted to make it real idealised good, instead of processing that there is no such thing. Crowley’s character arc deconstructs the concept of evil, Aziraphale’s character arc deconstructs the concept of good. Daoism may be the most known religion / spirituality that purposefully doesn’t push towards an idealised ‘good’. It’s not just a presumption that it isn’t realistically attainable, it straight up isn’t the objective. The goal is just to be.

#good omens #good omens meta #go meta #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #aziraphale #what does aziraphale actually believe

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theangelyouknew · 6 months

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Thanks for the tag @takeme-totheworld

10 Characters, 10 Fandoms

Crowley- Good Omens

Ed Teach - our flag means death

The Wolf - 10th Kingdom**

Twelfth Doctor- doctor who

Willow Rosenberg- Buffy

Rose Quartz - Steven Universe

Ursula (animated) - Disney

Oswald Cobblepot - Gotham

Dorothy - Golden Girls

Mr. Gold / Rumple - Once Upon a Time

**the 10th kingdom doesn’t really have a fandom but still

Anyway I’m not sure what my metric is.. if I love them or want to be them. I’ve RP’d and / or cosplayed a lot of these lol

Tagging @atmosphere-of-the-marvelous @amagnificentobsession @bagginsgotdabooty @btab66 @craintheodora @highseas-swede @janeway-lover @iceeericeee-reblogs @pee-pance @spatiummonstrum

Feel free to ignore if you don’t wanna do it. But if you do it, please make your own post. Thanks ^_^

#the only one I never rp or cosplayed was Dorothy. everyone else I at least did something lol

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lookingatacupoftea · 4 months

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How safe is the bookshop?

I really wish I understood better which meet-up locations are more or less dangerous and, in particular, how safe the bookshop is or is not preceding S2. (This a riff off of @takeme-totheworld's recent post wondering how closely they are being watched).

It seems to me that meeting in a fully public location -- the park. a crowd, a theater audience, a bus -- allows for the most plausible deniability, and this is where we see the bulk of their interactions until Armageddon v1. This is also the argument Crowley uses when Furfur catches them at the theater: "Pure coincidence. I happened to be here, he asked for a volunteer." However, the earth observation files include photos of them taken in public places, so maybe it's not so safe. Do they know they've been photographed?

Restaurants seem to be skirting this rule, since they are technically public but comprised of groups of people who are choosing to associate with each other. They indulge in this activity at least once before S1 ("we had crepes!") and two times during the Armageddon, when the end of the world is nigh and they are more comfortable bending the rules.

Private spaces seem most dangerous to me. If you are caught together in private, there is no plausible deniability. The Bentley isn't safe from demonic intrusion, at least in S1, and we don't see Crowley drive Aziraphale around much: only in 1941 and then S1, when they're bending the rules because Armageddon. They also don't seem to use the flat except maybe the night before the swap.

The bookshop is where things get murky. How often do angels drop in on Aziraphale prior to Gabriel and Sandalphon visiting in S1? Is Aziraphale also subject to random communications through his phonograph like Crowley is through the Bentley radio? Is Crowley protected against hell when he's in the bookshop and, if so, has that been true since its opening in 1800? It seems in S2 like only angels/demons who are invited can come into the bookshop. Was that true before S2? Is the bookshop only an "independent embassy" (which makes no sense) once Aziraphale is sort-of retired from heaven in S2?

I think this plays into how we understand their relationship, especially prior to S2. How dangerous is it to be caught by another angel or demon socializing or being intimate with the hereditary enemy? (I'm thinking of physical intimacy, yes, but this could also apply to day drinking bouts and naps on the couch). Being a "trusted stooge and confidant" seems pretty dangerous in 1941 part 2, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if their cozy evening in the bookshop is interrupted in 1941 part 3.

Of course, feelings can outweigh prudence. So they could at various moments decide to take a risk to be together.

#some of my confusion may stem from reading fan fics where they spend lots of time lounging around the bookshop #the answer may not matter as much as recognizing they are never really free #even if they aren't actively policed very much they may self-police out of fear #good omens analysis #good omens bookshop #ineffable husbands

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queer-reader-07 · 5 months

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thanks @ineffabildaddy and @crowleyslvt for the tags!!

last song: Ten Times More by Dropkick Murphys (the This Machine Kills Fascists Album has been on repeat for me for the past week or so lol)

favorite color: purple 💜

sweet, savory, or spicy: sweet!

relationship status: single, not actively ready to mingle but hopefully in the future

last TV show or movie: the last movie was Bottoms which i watched with my friends (much to the disappointment of my dad who had apparently been hoping to watch it with me)

currently watching: working my way through Doctor Who (i'm on the 12th doctor) and also ofc losing my mind over Percy Jackson

last thing i looked up: christina aguilera

literally zero pressure tags <3: @ineffablake @myhyperfixationmademedoit @procrastiel @takeme-totheworld @katspause @andiv3r @something-something-goodomens

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greenthena · 5 months

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Last Song: Shadow Hat -Glenn Gatsby

Last Film: Barbie???? I think

Currently Reading: re-reading Sourcery by Terry Pratchett.

Currently Watching: Doctor Who. And lucky me I’m about to start season four. David tennant and Catherine tate?!?!?

Currently Consuming: just swallowed some toothpaste unfortunately

Currently Craving: inspiration for the aha! moment in my current fic. You know that scene that every other scene hinges on? Yah. Haven’t found it yet.

Thank you @belladonna413 for the tag, friend!!!!

and a few no pressure tags if you wanna play along @takeme-totheworld @fellthemarvelous @sad-chaos-goblin @ao3cassandraic @beebopboom @yronnia @theangelyouknew @thescarletgarden1990 @despisedtoolofsatan @pabulumm

#You’re it #Chaos train

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kingdogg75 · 2 years

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Nuestras classes inglés desarrollarán las habilidades de comunicación de tus hijos para estudiar, viajar y para que sigan sus propios intereses. #learnwiththebest #elsbyguillermodavila #fromecuador🇪🇨totheworld🌏

#Whatsapp0983854241

#Nuestras classes inglés desarrollarán las learnwiththebest elsbyguillermodavila fromecuador🇪🇨totheworld🌏Whatsapp0983854241

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tiptopticketyboo · 3 months

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People I'd like to Know Better

Thank you for the tag, @the-ineffable-dance 😊 I've never been tagged in these games and felt too shy to join but I'll be braver now 😊

Last Song: What Are We Waiting For? by Amiina

Favorite Color: magenta, pastel pink, lavender, violet

Currently Watching: I've just started to watch Vicious (Metatron and Gandalf as an old couple trying to outsquabble (if this word exists in English) each other. They're lovely but still unsure if I can take so much bickering

Spicy/Savory/Sweet: sweet & savory

Relationship Status: married

Current Obsession: Good Omens

Gently tagging: @fellthemarvelous @makewayforbigcrossducks @takeme-totheworld @dalliancekay @stillsurfacequietpond

#no pressure only play if you like #happy to get to know my mutuals

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azeutreciathewicked · 2 months

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WIP Tag Game

Thanks for the tag @springofviolets

If you're tagged, make a new post (don't reblog this one) and share 1-2 sentences from your most recent unposted WIP(s) with zero context - Let your followers guess!

"Time had passed for this human, the center of an empire that whirled around him, and he still asked the same question in a multitude of ways, patiently waiting for the answer as his life ticked by. Waiting for him to be ready to answer, as he waited now, listening."

"Twice, a wish spoken. An unseen power of the universe awoke and listened for the third utterance, for therein lay power to change reality, to even unravel Fate."

“Foam. And… a green cracker. With some sorts of weird white bubble things. That was our meal.”

“Yes, they call it ‘molecular gastronomy’. It was a deconstructed…”

“I thought you ‘deconstructed’ food by chewing it?”

She met Beelzebub back behind the old gym Revving their hog on the street

They said, “Hello, hey Gabs! You wanna give it a go?”

Buzzy buzzy ya-ya da-da Buzzy buzzy ya-ya, here Lemon Yuri Demon ya ya Naughty Lady Beelzebub

(I had to bend the rules because I have a Tarrasque-level mega-fic I'm working on, so I took a couple quotes from that. But I have two other WIPs on the back burner, but they needed more than 2 sentences for a reasonable excerpt. Take me away in handcuffs like Bastille Aziraphale, viral meme police! )

Tag you’re it (if you wanna) to @princesslegolas, @finlands-world, @takeme-totheworld!

#wip game #fanfiction #fanfic #good omens #good omens fanfiction

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belladonna413 · 4 months

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Thank you for tagging me, @paperclipbean!

Rules: color the sentences that are true about you. ✨️

I'm over 5'5 / i wear glasses or contacts / i have blonde hair / i often wear sweatshirts / i prefer loose clothing over tight clothes / i have one or two piercings (does this just mean I have a few piercings? cause i have four...) / i have at least one tattoo / i have blue eyes / i have dyed or highlighted my hair / i have or have had braces / i have freckles / i paint my nails / i typically wear makeup / i don't often smile / resting bitch face / i play sports / i play an instrument / i know more than one language / i can cook or bake / i like writing / i like to read / i can multitask / i've never dated anyone / i have a best friend i've known for over five years / i am an only child

Tagging @cobragardens, @shadesofecclescakes, @ihavenoideahowtodream, @celestialcrowley, @crowleyraejepsens, @tominniemousesblog and @takeme-totheworld

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itmestine · 6 months

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Thank you so much for the tag @takeme-totheworld! This is my first time doing one of these too.

10 Characters, 10 Fandoms

Tokyo Mew Mew - Retasu Midorikawa

Naruto - Kakashi Hatake

Jane Eyre - Jane Eyre

Love Live Sunshine - Chika Takami

Mushi-shi - Ginko

Bakemonogatari - Tsubasa Hanekawa

From The New World - Saki Watanabe

Genshin Impact - Diluc Raginvindr

Obey Me - Lucifer

Good Omens - Aziraphale and Crowley (I am incapable of picking between them)

Tagging (no pressure of course!): @neiratina @obae-me @dreamsforthedamned @jasper-crow @the-name-is-loser @mimisempai @dral-koumine

#tag game #in vague chronological order #for bakemonogatari it's tsubasa tiger specifically that skyrocketed her as one of my favs #tokyo mew mew was baby's first anime #love live sunshine got me through college lol #i can't pick between aziraphale and crowley both of their characters compel me and won't leave my brain #obey me is a trash fire game that I love wholeheartedly and lucifer is very bullyable #had to read jane eyre for a hs class and ended up being the only one who loved it specifically for jane's character #from the new world is an incredible anime always recommend it #same for mushi shi it's a beautiful piece of art #genshin impact is genuinely a very fun game and the story is pretty good #diluc was my first pull and he's stuck with me ever since #i was the cringefail kid in elementary school with a naruto bandana #kakashi was my fav back then and gai has since tied with him #as a child gai annoyed me but as an adult he's the real mvp #anyway!#thanks for the tag!!#this was very fun~

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tallerthantale · 4 months

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What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 6: Philosophy Time

This post finishes the minisode and flashback content, starting from 1800's Edinburgh through to the 1960's bit. There is a lot of attention given to how Aziraphale conceptualises good and evil, and the roles of angels, demons, and humans within the divine system. About 3k words.

A Spot of Body Snatch

Some juicy bits of philosophy show up in the Edinburgh flashback. While Aziraphale has been able to disagree with the archangels, or think that they are misguided about God’s will, the general moral esthetics of what heaven is supposed to represent have largely been left intact. The idea is you put a bunch of people out in the world, you see who does the good things and who does the bad things, and you reward and punish accordingly. Aziraphale still believes that is a component of the ineffable plan, and advocates for some version of it in the modern era. At this point he thinks that it’s all going rather well, and you can easily sort the good and bad humans apart. He doesn’t look too closely, because that’s not going to help preserve his sense of self. He has been on the earth for over 5800 years at this point. His ignorance to the disadvantages of the poor is willful. See end note.

At the start of the adventure, Aziraphale believes body snatching is wicked. It is a morally bad thing to do, people who do it are morally bad. People who finance it are morally bad. This is an intuitive judgement, it feels wrong. As is commonly the case with intuitive judgements, it gets messy on the application, the devil's in the details. When he miracles the freshly dug up body into a skeleton, why does that feel right? Ostensibly the wickedness of the body snatching is the desecration of the dead. By turning the body into skeleton soup, Aziraphale has personally desecrated the dead. You could make the argument that it was a necessary evil in the name of a greater good, but Aziraphale doesn't make that argument, he claims that what he did was directly a morally good act. Why? Because it felt good to him to do it. He was sticking it to the morally bad people by making their life harder. Sometimes Aziraphale is a petty bitch like that.

When he learns that the body snatching operation functions to alleviate human suffering, his feelings change first, then his judgement changes. After the talk with the surgeon, holding the tumour in a jar, participating in the body snatching feels like helping to relieve human suffering, therefore his involvement in it is in alignment with the ineffable plan, therefore let's go do it. It is worth noting that for all Aziraphale emphasises forgiveness in his interactions with Crowley, he doesn’t ask for it here. There are many factors involved in that, and @takeme-totheworld has some very relevant things to say on the way Aziraphale engages with forgiveness from ex-Christian perspective.

I think one of the other factors involved is that Aziraphale is pretty normalised to reshuffling his beliefs to feel better about himself, and a feature of that normalisation is not fully taking accountability when you shuffle a disavowed belief out. Veil!Aziraphale allows just enough awareness for conscious!Aziraphale to express that his previous belief was incorrect, and then it’s yeeted like that belief never existed. Accountability, apologising, asking forgiveness, all of that would require conscious!Aziraphale to retain awareness of the offending prior belief and prior action. Believing he did a bad thing before breaks his ability to believe that as an angel he is incapable of doing bad things. He doesn't need to believe the absolutist stuff all the time, but it can't coexist in conscious awareness with the knowledge that he has been wrong. It is a known problem with shame responses, they sometimes motivate us to eliminate our awareness of our actions rather than motivate us to make amends.

When Wee Morag is mortally wounded, Aziraphale decides he is going to break heaven's rules, and asserts that the thing he will do, which isn't allowed by heaven, is the right thing to do. Since Uz Aziraphale has been able to believe that the policy of the institution of heaven is wrong and has been willing to go against it. He can shuffle that belief in when needed, and then shuffle it back out to go back to his day to day believing in heaven most of the time. His inclination to break the rules to save Wee Morag is in keeping with that shuffling ability, but we can observe that he slips into it a lot more comfortably than he used to, though not as comfortably as we might like, and not fast enough to save her.

People Get a Choice

What stands out in this era is his continued attachment, just previously in the minisode, to the idea that angel = good and demon = evil. For all he is willing to believe heaven is wrong, he will not let go of categorising the angels as ‘good,’ even into the modern era. It is deeply tied to his internal understanding of his personal relationship to God as an angel, and therefore his sense of self. He knows the other angels would deliberately let Wee Morag die. But the other angels are still angels, and therefore ‘good.’ Crowley, who is working to alleviate human suffering, is ‘evil’ so long as he remains a demon.

The exact phrasing is: "I am good. You, I'm afraid, are evil. But people get a choice." As for Crowley being evil, yes, Aziraphale thinks Crowley is nice. Yes, he thinks Crowley is a good person. Yes, he 100% loves Crowley as he is. But Crowley’s existence is conceptually evil in the abstract through no fault of his choices. Humans can choose. Crowley can't. Aziraphale’s attachment to this point drives most of the serious conflict between them. The worst things Aziraphale says to Crowley are on this theme. So why is he so defensive of it 5800 years in? What is this position doing for him? What does believing this save him from believing instead?

What Aziraphale is protecting himself from is the existential crisis of the pointlessness of it all. He is keeping himself from believing that the entire set up of the sides of good and evil, and humanity having the choice between good and evil, is all a sham. He is protecting himself from believing that he has no side. That there cannot ever be an idealised heaven that represents good. It isn’t just unachievable, it is incoherent. That his behaviour isn’t about furthering the cause of the greater good, he’s just doing what makes himself happy and deciding that is the right thing after the fact. That his sense of what feels right is no substitute for actual ethical principles. To prevent himself from processing all that, he will believe that Crowley is ‘evil’ in the abstract.

Aziraphale's mind likes to protect itself from responsibility. "You're an angel, I don't think you can do the wrong thing." Aziraphale grasped at straws to take that at face value from a fallen angel, but he grabbed that straw and he didn't let it go. Believing angels are inherently naturally good helps support his inclination to intuit morality. He can just let his innate angel vibes tell him what the right thing is (it’s whatever feels right to do) and he can be confident that is good, because he was an angel when he wanted to do it, and he is still an angel after having done it.

However, this is a very precarious defence for a lot of reasons. If we are working with a definition of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that have no relationship to personality or behaviour, that’s not very reassuring. Aziraphale cant prove to himself his actions are morally good actions if his continued status as an angel is utterly unconnected to his actions. If angelic / demonic status defining celestials as good and evil is connected to actions or inclinations, how does Aziraphale parse the questionable actions of the other angels, and does he think less of Crowley? I suspect that for the most part he is generating definitions moment to moment that serve the interests of whatever else he is trying to believe at the time. Entirely abandoning the association of good/angel and evil/demon feels too much like abandoning his internal concept of God, so he won’t. Thinking Crowley is a bad person because he is a demon would be equally horrific, so he won’t do that either. He will roll through shifting definitions and avoid looking too hard at the consequences of his positions.

One option for what he can believe that I suspect has been growing stronger, is believing that God has a plan for Crowley that involves a deliberately unjust fall, to return him from later. It solves a lot of the above conflicts. He doesn’t have to consider if Crowley had a choice in becoming a demon, he doesn’t have to believe Crowley ever ‘did the wrong thing’ voluntarily while an angel, it makes it easier for him to rationalise that he is personally incapable of doing the wrong thing, it helps him rationalise his own relationship with Crowley. The only real downside is the part where Crowley would never in a million years endorse this viewpoint, and at some level Aziraphale must be aware of that because he doesn’t tend to express anything like this openly. However it very much looks to me like the missing piece that makes everything else fit. See end note.

Obviously!

Sometimes thinking Crowley's fall is part of an ineffable plan won't stop Aziraphale from being petty about Crowley's demonic status when that opinion isn't on his mind. "We may have both started out as angels, but you are fallen." It might be the rudest version of all of Aziraphale's 'holier than thou' moments, and in the context of what Crowley had likely recently been through, that was really unnecessarily mean.

Now for one of my more counter intuitive takes; Aziraphale is mean to Crowley because he puts him on a pedestal. When you believe someone is so magnificent, so perfect, so destined, you can believe nothing you do or say is capable of causing them harm. Then you can get really careless, particularly if the person you're putting on a pedestal doesn't readily show you their pain. If they are so grand, and your opinion doesn't have any value anyway, why bother considering what you say?

When asked for holy water, Aziraphale's mind goes to a suicide pill, because Aziraphale could not cope with being a demon. He’s had a lot of time to think about it now, he has come to understand that Crowley really isn’t “free to do whatever [he] want[s]” and I think he would genuinely prefer not to exist than to be in Crowley’s position. He projects his feelings about how horrible it would be for him onto Crowley, but also thinks Crowley is the stronger one, and the better one. Crowley just got back from being yanked down to hell for doing a good deed. A good deed that involved bullying Aziraphale into giving his money away, which he wouldn’t have done on his own. Crowley’s good deed for which he was likely tortured involved pressuring an angel into doing the right thing, after Aziraphale had been too slow to properly help the humans, while accurately sassing him for not understanding the impacts of poverty on humanity. It's not hard to see why Aziraphale might believe Crowley would prefer not to be a demon. There are times he makes a better angel than Aziraphale. Although to be fair, Crowley did overdo it on that hole.

Date Night

A toast ‘to shades of grey’. Aziraphale’s choice of words, Aziraphale’s choice to make it a toast. It’s an interesting pair of choices. Aziraphale has been in the middle with Crowley for thousands of years, but this is the moment he lets himself acknowledge the value of shades of grey. What does it mean, given everything Aziraphale has already done? Aziraphale had been believing everything he had done was 100% good, he just had convoluted justifications. Now his convoluted justifications only get him as far as very light grey, and he is finally starting to make his peace with that.

Does that mean he isn’t thinking of himself as 100% aligned with God? I think sometimes yes, but also sometimes no. The other option is that he doesn’t think God is 100% good anymore. Each version represents a massive shift. If we understand Aziraphale’s journey to being at peace with himself as a Daoist one, and I think there is a lot of subtext to that effect, Daoism doesn’t do absolutist good and evil. Things just… are. The divine isn’t a refined extreme. The Dao isn’t ‘good.’ It is. Full stop. I think Aziraphale will consider God less good more readily than he will consider himself misaligned with Her.

Why now? Because he realised, fully into his conscious awareness, that he was in love with a demon, as a demon. Nothing else fits the toast because nothing else changed in terms of Aziraphale’s philosophical alignment. Many flashbacks have brought us new things Aziraphale is willing to do that might distance himself from the ranks of the institution of heaven. Nothing new happened on that front in 1941. Many flashbacks have shown Aziraphale having new ways he is willing to understand the human world. Nothing new happened on that front in 1941. Something shifted in the way he understands his sense of self and his relationship to God, and one of the few things that still ties back to that is the role of angels and demons in the universe. It wasn’t what he was willing to do that broke new ideological ground, it was what he was willing to feel.

That willingness to feel broke a psychological wall for Aziraphale, and I believe with that wall down he can now think of himself and Crowley as somewhat ‘human aligned’ when it comes to certain aspects of their morality. Aziraphale talks with Crowley about the shades of grey they prefer. The way the term prefer is used here implies they have options. Options implies a choice. Choice was supposed to be for people. They may not have the ability to choose their employer, but they are both choosing to be a bit grey, and now they can say it to each other out loud. I will come back to this point in a future post.

You Go Too Fast For Me

He knows he is in love with a demon, but he still isn’t ready to act on it. He says maybe one day. I think all of him wants Crowley, but not all of him wants to want a demon. I think some of the fandom doesn’t want to process this about Aziraphale, but really think about it. If Crowley was an angel rescuing him and the books in the church, then in the 60’s offering to take him anywhere he wants to go, do you really think he would still say no? There is of course a conflation between their roles on opposite sides of celestial conflict and Crowley’s metaphysical status as a demon. It's the being on opposite sides that's the problem. I don’t think Aziraphale has any sort of disgust reaction or aversion to demonic features or demonic energy. But the metaphysical status of demon is the origin of their opposite sides situation, and Aziraphale isn’t prepared to feel like that is entirely arbitrary, even if it’s part of a bigger ineffable plan. Too fast isn’t a forever no, it’s check back later. Aziraphale knows it will ‘feel right’ down the line, and I don’t think that depends on demonic status going away, just on him needing time to process his feelings. For Aziraphale’s lifetime, 1941-1967 is the blink of an eye.

Part 6/10

End Notes

On willful ignorance: In my opinion, IRL willful ignorance mostly takes the form of a motivated lack of awareness. If a particular perspective, interpretation, relevant factor, explanation, ect… doesn’t line up with a person’s sense of self or behaviour, it stays out of awareness because the background mechanisms of the mind work to keep it out of awareness. The information they do not absorb is targeted. It isn’t random, it follows a strategy, and yet, they have no idea that they are doing it. It is… exhausting… to engage with that.

On pedestals: It has been observed that the level of misogyny in a country correlates very highly with a tendency to put women on pedestals. The more prevalent attitudes about how wonderful and perfect women are for doing all the womanly things so well predicts both a strong demand that women conform to those expectations and harsh penalties when they don't. Putting a person on a pedestal is a way to feel like you are honoring that person when you are actually threatening them.

On God having a plan for Crowley: I’ll be going into further detail as to why I think Aziraphale believes this and what it means in a future post, probably the final post. The closest we see him get to expressing this perspective to Crowley is the “May you be forgiven,” and if that is where he was going with it, that was like, the worst way he could possibly have put it. I do wonder if the 1941 apology dance could have come from Aziraphale telling Crowley he thinks God has a martyr plan for him. I think internally acknowledging that he was in love could have led to him saying it, and I think Crowley would be very valid in wanting an apology if he had. That said, I think the apology dance could also be explained by Aziraphale almost getting them caught with the magic show, and taking his time to reveal that he had swapped the photos.

While we're talking about old apology dances, I think the 1650 one probably had something to do with Anne Greene.

#good omens #good omens meta #go meta #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #ineffable spouses #what does aziraphale actually believe

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