#👏 I CANNOT 👏 STAY 👏 ON TOPIC

[thesherrinfordfacility]

LWA: I'm going to ruminate a bit more about the parallel between Maggie's & Nina's conversation with Crowley and the Metatron's conversation with Aziraphale--they refer to Aziraphale as Crowley's "partner," the Metatron talks about their "partnership"; both insist that Aziraphale and Crowley need to talk--because while I think it's easy enough to see that the Metatron deliberately manipulates Aziraphale (while not understanding him fully), Maggie and Nina accidentally do the same thing to Crowley (while also not understanding him fully). There's been ample discussion of the Metatron conversation, but not so much about Maggie's and Nina's messing about.

I think we have to begin from the position that Maggie and Nina are mostly misguided and, in Nina's case, explicitly hypocritical. Other people have already pointed out that Nina's barrage of questions about Crowley's and Aziraphale's relationship is ludicrous and inappropriate--this is not even bad fanfic outsider POV levels of behavior--but given her outrage when Muriel pokes into her own business later, the script sure seems to imply that, yes, her barrage of questions really /is/ ludicrous and inappropriate. (She's had, what? Two minutes of interaction with Crowley up to this point? What even is that conversation?) Given that Maggie and Nina are Crowley's and Aziraphale's primary mirrors in S2, although always bearing in mind that Gaiman likes his mirroring to be askew or warped, is it the case that Nina's behavior in particular just reflects our angel-demon duo's behavior straight back at them?

A lot of S2 struck me not as fan service so much as fan /corrective/, in particular about the fandom's tendency to read them as more human than angel and demon. Even in S1, we were shown repeatedly that no matter how much they might like humans and aspects of human affect/existence, they don't move through the world like humans, they don't have a human relationship to time (and not just because Crowley can alter it), they do things the "human way" explicitly for /fun/, and they demonstrate over and over again that they have at best a limited grasp of human psychology. Crowley's "godfather" plot doesn't work not only because of free will, but also because even in the GO comic universe, it represents near-total incomprehension about how messily nurture /operates/; neither of them understands Anathema's fear about accepting a lift home from what appears to be two men; etc. It genuinely does not occur to Crowley (and therefore to most of the audience) that turning paintguns into real guns for fun might be an issue, nor to Aziraphale that wiping Mary Hodges' memory after the interrogation might be suboptimal. This kind of mayhem is bog-standard comic character behavior,* but the trick that GO plays is to ask you to think about the ethics involved when the bog-standard comic character is super-powered. The thing is--and you will have noticed this is a running theme in my asks, I suspect!--is that while it's very easy to identify with these characters as /oppressed/ trauma victims, the novel explicitly and the series implicitly keep warning us that in relation to the humans, they are still the /oppressors./ In the novel, this is Aziraphale's insight at the end, and if S2's more pointed emphasis on how both characters unthinkingly treat human beings is any indication, it's also where the series appears to be tending. (This is why I get a little antsy about reading Crowley's brand of temptation as promoting "choice" or something else positive: it's great that Crowley dislikes killing people, but he's still mucking about with them to make his souls quota. Satan /likes/ what Crowley did with the M25.)

To circle around to Maggie and Crowley again: a) they understand Crowley and Aziraphale about as well as Crowley and Aziraphale understand them, which is to say, they don't, and b) Crowley still does not understand how to apply human frames of reference to his own relationship with Aziraphale. Besides the warning about treating humans like toys--which Crowley, in typically on-brand behavior, excuses rather than apologizes for--the most important thing Nina says is not the "romantic" advice. It's the point she makes about her readiness to be in a relationship after being dumped by an abusive ex, which is to say, her non-readiness. Because it would be cruel to the other person. /This/ is what Crowley needs to hear and understand, and he...doesn't. (Aziraphale also needs to hear this, but he's off having his relationship with Crowley rewritten by the Metatron.) S2 spends a lot of time demonstrating that Crowley and Aziraphale haven't even been dumped by their respective allegorical "exes," let alone that they've recovered sufficiently to actually "go off" together or have a full-blown romantic relationship. Crowley's panic at the end of S2 leads him to accelerate straight into marriage proposal mode, when it is exactly the thing that he has just been warned that he /should not do/. That is, he would have been warned if he grasped the analogy between his situation and Nina's, but he genuinely can't see it, much as neither he nor Aziraphale understands fictional marriage plots. It's an analogy that exists for us, the human audience, but not for him.

I do think fans sometimes forget that Aziraphale and Crowley /are/ comic characters who think and act like comic characters, and that this has ramifications for how S3 will resolve their relationship?

hello again LWA!!!✨ im so sorry this has been burning away in my inbox for a fair while!!!

i gotta be honest, the mirroring of aziraphale and crowley in the general sense to maggie and nina is something that ive had a pin in for a while, just because of the sheer amount of information the parallel in all its skewed glory contains (and then that got me to thinking about the other mirror couples too, and its taken me a while - and pages of notes - to climb out of that particular rabbit hole). ie: dear LWA, once again you're going to get ramblings you didn't ask for.

on face value, maggie = aziraphale, and nina = crowley, right? maggie is soft and gentle, more readily/outwardly compassionate and innocent, even dresses in a typically lighter palette, and runs a shop that was literally carved out of aziraphale's own one. nina is acerbic and dry, outspoken and unapologetic, dresses likewise in darker clothing, and runs a coffeeshop that not only has a name that offers its patrons a choice, but feeds people with their fix - a material desire, if you like. it's far from a direct copy-and-paste of aziraphale and crowley, but they're instantly recognisable.

but you then have their situations (and im not breaking new ground here; this is just so i exorcise the thought-demons rattling around to make way for new ones) and their behaviours, that then reflect the opposite main character. maggie is shown fairly neatly to the audience, by virtue of her interaction with shax, to follow a similar pattern to crowley's circumstances as shown to us in s2 - linking a silly gifset demonstrating where im coming from on this, bc it saves the typing. she brings what is essentially a courting gift to nina, and then helps her out in the shop after the demon raid (reminiscent of the 1800 chocolates specifically, and then just... every favour/demonstration crowley has ever performed for aziraphale, frankly). nina is shown as being in an abusive relationship that she seems fully aware is abusive, full of gaslighting and possessiveness, but that she can't, for whatever reason, bring herself to leave - especially telling given her line that she thinks lindsay actually "never liked her very much", which aptly seems to reflect a good portion of how heaven views aziraphale. she's understandably hesitant and standoffish, and despite how unhealthy her relationship is, she is faithful and loyal to it despite the (unintentional, circumstantial) temptation being offered.

what i find interesting is that aziraphale interacts more with maggie, and crowley with nina. couple of thoughts on this, and all (and more besides) could be equally true:

aziraphale and crowley are drawn to the circumstances that their mirror is in; aziraphale is drawn to showing kindness to someone who is lonely and trepidatious, crowley is drawn to showing a wider perspective to someone who is inhibited and wary. the eden scene, in this context, feels all the more recognisable... plus, the anathema/newt mirroring!

aziraphale and crowley are drawn to the person that reflects their personality, possibly because it feels comforting and familiar. they feel kinship to the human that behaves more outwardly like themselves. again, im struck by how this feels a lot like their respective interactions with tracy and shadwell in s1

the fact that aziraphale and crowley interact more frequently and comfortably with maggie and nina respectively is used to draw attention to the moments where they don't interact with the other.

this last one is something i want to parse out a little bit. it is almost certain that aziraphale has had previous interactions with nina; he's possibly been in the coffeeshop before given how easily he addresses her, and nina remarks that aziraphale never goes to the monthly meetings, etc. she doesn't know him as well as maggie does, but by virtue of being neighbours, it stands to reason that they have had previous encounters that build up an acquaintance. crowley, on the other hand, does not appear to have met either of them before.

where aziraphale appears to interact with nina, however, in a one-on-one context, is the following conversation (im blithely ignoring the end of ep4 that's not even a conversation):

specifically, the culmination of where aziraphale has not only presumed that he has license to mess about with her personal life in general, but now with her and the other shopkeepers' autonomies and agencies. he's playing god in this, weaving his power (imo, to varying degrees of consciousness) to set up the perfect romantic scenario for maggie and nina, but also for him and crowley.

the fact that nina doesn't conform, pushes back on that magic, has broken away from the collective mentality of just accepting the situation and instead is questioning it all, directly and without hesitation, is a crucial part of this for me; because aziraphale backs away, leaves the line of questioning, very quickly. he doesn't want to confront it, doesn't want to be shown where this is a reflection on his actions. he's being shown the same way of thinking that scared him with crowley, and aziraphale is still scared of it upending careful order and blissful ignorance.

he brushes it off, and carries on with what he's doing, because it's what he's able to control; aziraphale has to make order of things, cannot conceive of the chaos that asking questions would bring. translate this directly to how he ignores crowley's concerns in ep5, and then basically the fact that a good deal of crowley's characterisation is built on the premise of asking questions, and you can see where this - asking questions - is something that aziraphale still fears; it poses danger (it had direct consequences in the fall, after all!) so, of course asking questions is something to fear.

but then again, is it because nina is a mirror of crowley? if circumstantially nina is actually aziraphale, is aziraphale actually reacting in a way that shows he's scared of himself? he who is starting to ask his own questions? starting to reexamine the status quo? i think this possibly rings more true than the simple nina = crowley thought, because whilst aziraphale may still not be completely comfortable with crowley's questions, and what they mean, i do think that it's a part of crowley's... crowleyness that aziraphale likes and loves. something that he has accepted... but only when it comes from crowley. the aziraphale that baulked at questions in the pre-fall scene/in eden is not, arguably, the aziraphale we see in 2023; he's in love with crowley, as he currently is (or at least, how aziraphale perceives him).

so wouldn't it make sense that aziraphale is actually afraid of how much nina is reflecting his own innermost thoughts back at him? the thoughts that begin to question why it is that an angel and a demon can't be together, what the point of heaven actually is, why heaven is the way it is, and why - if god has set things out the way they're meant to be - does that feel wrong? if aziraphale is questioning all of this, what does that say about him? how close is he to losing being an angel altogether? he's previously defied god and heaven's orders, but is this a step too far?

moving on to the maggie and crowley dynamic; this to me is equally as interest because they... do not interact, as far as i can remember, in a one-on-one context, at all - with the exception of this one scene:

im not quite sure what to read into this. my initial thought however, if we take the conclusion that maggie's circumstances and subsequent insecurities are a reflection of crowley, i do wonder if it's the absence of interaction that is key; that crowley is avoiding his reflection. that could be for any number of reasons, and no one reason feels quite right to me - arrogance, shame, embarrassment, fear of being seen, vulnerability... it's probably a mix. but it would nonetheless correlate with crowley's portrayal as not only an unreliable narrator at times, but also, as we've discussed previously, that he hasn't quite yet reached the development point of wanting to fully confront a good handful of his decisions and actions, nor want to acknowledge his circumstances that leave him open and vulnerable.

so what seems to be a rather purposeful tepid and... uninteresting? conversation suddenly has weight in everything that is missing. add to this, the way that crowley remains outside the bookshop as maggie, blissfully unaware, strolls into the bookshop, and he leaps in to stop the demons in their tracks before they can get to her, speaks even louder. he's most comfortable in being a protector, a fixer, a hero - even if it goes unnoticed and thankless, because that is his method of control:

but anyway, to actually head back to what your ask is actually saying! i find the assessment of nina as acting somewhat hypocritical really interesting - because yeah, she definitely appears as a very private person when questioned by just anybody (if we take into her responses to mrs sandwich and muriel into account)... but she does open up slightly to maggie.

she doesn't outright state the true problem with her relationship - again, im fairly certain she's aware of the abusive nature of it - to maggie, but she definitely aludes to its true nature more than we see her do otherwise. when maggie makes the assumption that being bombarded with texts automatically means that the sender must care about the recipient - said with some good measure of naivety - nina puts that to bed with her thinly veiled response that it's not out of care, but out of possessiveness. she reveals a bit more of herself to maggie; it goes from "doesn't like when im late", to the more vulnerable, "...likes it if i text that im gonna be more than ten minutes late..."

so when it comes to how she comes across as hypocritical in how she questions crowley about his and aziraphale's relationship - yeah, it's odd. it's funny as hell, and the comedy of it has its own merit, but it is invasive and uncomfortable at the same time. whilst it doesn't make it right (she ultimately needs to mind her own business, same as she impressed on others to do with her), it's not difficult to see where her line of, "other people's love lives always seem so much more straightforward than our own" would suggest that this is her brand of her escapism from her unhappy one. she's just witnessed gentle/fond ribbing between aziraphale and crowley, otherwise sees them together frequently, and they probably come across to her as an incredibly happy couple, that out of a place of perhaps envy and wistfulness, she becomes inappropriately nosy about it. for me, the saddest line about her relationship, repeating it from earlier, is that she doesn't think lindsay even liked her, which is the abject opposite of aziraphale and crowley.

poking her nose into their relationship, such as it is, is absolutely a mirror to their behaviour in messing about with hers with maggie, but it is understandable why she uses this as her own outlet, same as crowley and aziraphale seem to use hers as theirs. not justifiable, but understandable. but, like you say, it's not at all on the same level playing field - aziraphale and crowley have actual power that can influence the world and people around them, including magically creating scenarios according to what they think constitutes a romantic story, full of violins-swelling, world-stops-around-them moments, whereas nina - as far as we're aware - doesn't have any of that. this very imbalance highlights that they are not the same, and that the two situations cannot be directly compared.

like maggie remarks, she and nina are not a game, and shouldn't be played with just because it amuses them. for all of aziraphale and crowley's preachings about free will (including that they don't have it themselves as an angel and a demon, but that humans absolutely do and should have it, "that's the whole point"), the show expressively indicates that they don't appear to respect it or consider it more important than themselves, going so far as to remove it entirely and render it conditional on their own terms. whilst they may stray into very human behaviours (or maybe more accurately - human situations), they are manifestly not-human, they don't understand (or... care?) how the world in the general sense works, and arguably them being on earth in the first place contradicts that free will... blessings and temptations are all well and good, depending on how you look at them, but they shouldn't be happening to begin with.

the systematic presence of heaven and hell altogether arguably contradicts the foundation of free will, which seems to be something that neither of them fully see - they don't acknowledge that very problem... actually, no! i lie - crowley dances briefly and gingerly on this very point:

it's interesting how much the condition of humanity fades into the background when the narrative focus is on two supernatural characters and their personal storyline. and it's equally interesting how those same characters prop up their own irony as being the very thing that contradicts humanity from operating as it should, and - arguably - how it may have originally been designed.

everyone accepts that free will came to humanity from knowledge, and that knowledge was tempted to humanity by crowley... but he only says that he was sent up to eden to 'make some trouble'; who's to say that humanity wouldn't have come around to eating the apple anyway, which as crowley remarks was placed very pointedly within the garden, within literal arm's reach? did free will even need crowley to kickstart it? from the very first scene, we know that crowley evidently has free will by choosing to tempt eve to the apple, but we know that aziraphale has free will too, by choosing to give away the sword... so why wouldn't god have made humanity by the same design in the first place?

getting slightly off topic now, but it all seems to feed into the point that heaven and hell are superfluous to humanity's existence, and have only proven to treat humanity as a sandbox for their own ends. unfortunately, aziraphale and crowley don't quite seem to treat them much different in the grand scheme of things, even if their story, their 'version', is very much a 'lesser-stakes' microcosm of the wider narrative. nurture - ie. their unique experiences - may well have changed aziraphale and crowley in many ways, and separated them out from their contemporaries, but they equally still haven't fully shaken off their respective natures, either.

#👏 ONCE 👏 AGAIN #👏 I CANNOT 👏 STAY 👏 ON TOPIC #good omens #ask #crowley meta #aziraphale meta #s2 meta #s1 meta #i think? fuck it it is now #do i need a tag for nina/maggie meta? #look i do my best with these asks but what can i even add to half of them? theyre perfect

[redsaurrce]

Hey, about your question on toxic parents. Could I ask you, to identify what makes them toxic? Then from there you can find ways to counteract their behaviours.

If you just label them as toxic, it would be hard to pinpoint exactly what you are trying to do.

If they are gaslighting you, you must find ways to believe in your ability and ignore what is being said. Is what they are saying true? Probably not, reinforce your own understanding.

If they are being negative about certain topics or towards you in general, you must find things that make you feel positive. Do they dislike what you do? Maybe, but if you find joy in what you do, it will make their negativity less.

If they are quick to anger, as much as it hurts, for me personally, let them hear what they want to hear, and let them cool off. Talking back or talking at all will anger them further. If you get angry, everyone will see red and no one will listen to each other. You have to talk to each other calmly. If you must, bring a mediator in. That's how conflict resolution works.

If they are being judgemental, think about why they are saying that, and judge yourself fairly. Is what you are doing conrtributing to yourself? If it makes you happy, why listen? If they say it doesn't make anything better, perhaps it doesn't aid anyone around you, but if it aids you, it's fine.

If you feel a situation is being manipulated. Take a step back list what you know, what you want to do, what you're hearing and make a judgement from that.

But also realise that their expectations cannot and should not hold you down. You are free to do what you want to do. At some point you will leave them and talk to them once every few days. That's what parents do. They raise a child until they can live on their own. And when that day comes you must be independent enough to say, "this is what I'm doing, it's who I am, and I will take your words only into consideration."

What comes first is your wellbeing, health and needs. I could go on a tangent on what those are but think about it like this.

Your wellbeing must be satisfied, socially, physically, economically, emotionally, culturally, and spiritually.

The 6 needs you must satisfy are your, safety and security, health, education, sense of identity, employment, and adequate standard of living (food, water, clothes shelter).

Lastly, your health comprises of social, mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health.

If you can understand how these work and focus on wellbeing, needs and health, you will be able to move past the toxicity of your parents and become independent enough to put yourself first.

I hope this helped. I'm sorry if it's a bit of a tangent.

"The life you live is yours, and your happiness is your own. Pursue what fulfills you" - keshi

- 🎐

A very in-depth explanation 👏, people who have toxic people around them can refer to this!

Also a reminder to everyone, this is coming from a person who has been gaslighted enough to ruin an entire year of her life- please don't self doubt your guts, I've done it and I regret it every single day. I was made to believe that I was wrong and in the end I couldn't get what I wanted just because I was persuaded and wavered by some mere words.

This mistake's a life lesson for me, I hope no other person has to go through such experience to realize that they should've stayed true to their guts no matter what. Stay healthy everyone, now I know what "believe in yourself" actually means, so believe in yourself (pls).

#tysm 🎐 for giving out such a piece of valuable information ✨ 💖 #♡: 🎐anon #asks 💟 #wow I've been weird today right? 🥲