“Crowley is still an angel deep down” “Crowley is more of an angel than any of the archangels” “Crowley was only cast out because he needed to play his part in Armageddon, he's not a real demon” “Aziraphale wants to rebuild Heaven to be more like Crowley because he’s what an angel should be” no. Stop it. This is exactly where Aziraphale went wrong.
Crowley is 100% a demon. He's not actually a bit of an angel, and he's not cosmically better than any of the other demons we see in the series. He's much less vicious than most of them, yeah, but he's also much less vicious than most of the angels, because how “nice” a celestial being is has nothing to do with which side they're technically on. Crowley's kindness comes from him doing his best to help people despite the hurt he's suffered himself, not any sort of inherent residual or earned holiness. He was cast out just like the rest of the demons, and that's an important part of his history that shouldn't be minimized, excused, or, critically, 'corrected.'
Being angelic is not a positive or negative trait in the Good Omens universe. It's a species descriptor. Saying that Crowley is still an angel deep down because he helps people is an in-character thing for Aziraphale to think, certainly--Job and the final fifteen showed that in the worst possible way--but it's not something Crowley would ever react well to, and it's the main source of conflict in the entire "appoint you to be an angel" fiasco.
We know that Aziraphale thinks Crowley's fall was an injustice, but why? Well, because Crowley is actually Good, which means his fall was a mistake, or a test, or a regrettable error in judgment, or…something. Ineffable. Etc. The point is, he’s special, much better than those other demons, and if they can fix him and make him an angel again, everything will be fine! (So once Job's trials are over, everything will be restored to him? Praise be!) Aziraphale has to believe that Crowley's better traits come from traces of the angel he used to know and not the demon he's known for 6,000 years, because that’s how he can rationalize his incorrect view of Heaven as The Source Of Truth And Light And Good with his complicated feelings about Crowley's fall.
But Crowley's fall was not an injustice because he's actually a Good Person who didn't deserve it. Crowley's fall was an injustice because the entire system of dividing people into Good (obedient) and Bad (rebellious) is bullshit. Crowley is not an unfortunate exception to God's benevolence, he is a particularly sympathetic example of God's cruelty.
And really, Crowley doesn't behave at all like an angel, especially when he's at his best. All of the things that he's done that we as the audience consider Good are things that Heaven has directly opposed. (See: saving the goats and children in defiance of God in S2E2, convincing Aziraphale to give money to Elspeth despite Heaven's views on the "virtues of poverty" in S2E3, speaking out against the flood and the crucifixion in S1E3, tempting Aziraphale to enjoy earthly pleasures because he thinks they'll make him happy, stopping Armageddon.)
Heaven as an institution has never been about helping humanity. And that's not an issue of leadership, as Aziraphale seems to think--it's by design. Aziraphale's first official act as an angel toward humanity was to literally throw them to the lions. Giving them the sword wasn't him acting like an angel, it was just him being himself. Heaven doesn't care about humans. It's not supposed to. It's supposed to win the war against Hell, with humans as chess pieces at best and collateral damage at worst.
Yes, it's easier to think that there are forces that are supposed to be fundamentally good. It's easier to think that Aziraphale is going to show those mean archangels and the Metatron what’s coming to them and reform Heaven into what it "should" be, and that God is actually super chill and watching all of this while shipping ineffable husbands and cheering for them the whole way. And of course it's easier to take Crowley, who Aziraphale (and the audience) adores, and say that he deserves to be on the Good team much more than all those angels and demons that we don’t like. But that's not how it works. People are more complicated than that, even celestial beings.
Crowley is a demon, and the tragedy of his character is not that he's secretly a good guy who is being forced to be evil; the tragedy is that he's lived his whole life stuck between two institutional forces that are both equally hostile to the love he feels for the universe and the beings in it. There are no good and bad guys. There are no "right people." Every angel, demon, and human is capable of hurting or helping others based on their choices. That is, in fact, the entire fucking point.
2K notes
·
View notes
I loved Into the Spiderverse and it was a beautiful and game changing movie but Across the Spiderverse?? Oh it is special!!
Seeing Rio and Jeff and Miles and the way they communicate and the spanglish and Mile’s B in Spanish immediately riling his parents and the panadería with the lady decorating the cake and telling Miles to write shorter and the counselor’s let’s play up the struggling immigrant family angle that isn’t even true and everyone gathered around the way the do and Mile’s tia immediately going míralo!! Look how big you’ve gotten and the way she gets so close exactly the way tias just do and all the different dishes and the carne guisada con papa y zanahoria and Rio’s “I bet she doesn’t even speak Spanish” looking Mile’s and Gwen’s way and!!
“Bendición mami.” y “Que Dios te bendiga, mijo.”
And Miles’ grabbing Miguel an empanada and immediately going Tio!! And the ever so detailed difference between Miles’ and Miguel’s pronunciation and accents and speed and fluidity of which they speak Spanish and English and Spanglish because there’s also the generational differences and and and!!!
All of it!! Every single beautiful and wonderful detail I can’t remember right now because this is getting long but that’s so easy to see and process and feels just right and so natural because it’s done with such care and love and respect it is so so special!!
1K notes
·
View notes
You see, Martin says 'I grieved for you' to Jon, but this doesn't do justice for just what he would have gone through.
As most people know, having a loved one in hospital is horrible, but Jon's case is an entirely different thing. Assuming Jon was initially taken to a hospital in Great Yarmouth, it would've taken Martin a while to get there, even if he left right away. He might have missed Jon's emergency treatment, but he certainly didn't miss the worst of it.
Many people assume that CPR is a quick, simple, lifesaving procedure, it is not. Jon was found not breathing, and without a pulse, so he would have had at least 20 minutes straight of CPR, and that messes up a body. On a person as weak as Jon it would badly break ribs, and cause a lot of bruising. Even if Martin didn't have to watch Jon's chest be crushed to no avail, that type of damage is often visible.
I don't know if you've ever seen a dead body, but it's different to an unconscious one in every way. Jon of course, was not dead, but he would absolutely look it. As I'm sure you know, blood being pumped is what keeps the body warm, and breathing accounts for a large part of what we perceive as living, so the absence of both of these, especially in a loved one, is jarring, and likely to send anyone into shock
In lots of TV shows you see doctors calling deaths, but in reality it's actually quite a difficult thing to diagnose. It's not a quick check of the pulse and you're done, there's a lot of tests; there are many conditions that can look like death. In Jon's case his mind and nerves were still active, meaning it would have been picked up on fairly quickly, but Jon would have been assumed dead until these tests were completed.
The thing with a case like this, is there's nothing the doctors can feasibly do; as Elias says, it's an unknown quantity. The most likely course of action would be to make him as comfortable as possible, and redo the death checks every so often. There would be no hope for his recovery, but legally the hospital would have to do this, and would be able to offer very little comfort.
Although of course you want your loved one to survive, many family members of coma patients confess to hoping that they'd just die. The limbo of waiting is impossible to process, and having them there but having no way to communicate with them can be excruciating. There's no way to properly grieve for someone if you always have it in the back of your mind that they could wake up.
Giving up on someone like that is terribly and awfully painful. You can tell them you're sorry all you want, but you'll always be thinking about how they'd have wanted you to stay. Having to create both sides of an interaction like that when truly you're in control of neither is simply impossible to recover from.
Every action Martin took after Jon's death was justified, logical, even. To succumb to the lonely after leaving the man you love, sentencing him to die alone?
It feels right.
3K notes
·
View notes
How many games that I like are going to have really interesting portraits on the walls of beautiful old mansions or castles that I CAN’T FUCKING GET A DECENT LOOK AT AAAAAA
Anyway thanks to people on Twitter for these shots.
This is such a cool detail. Hojo and Lucrecia back in the day…I guess their couple’s portrait? I just remembered that they were actually married according to the family trees
Really gives off old school Victorian couple vibes like:
Also apparently Lucrecia looks so much like Sephiroth that some people thought it was him at first ahsvsvs.
Love how you can see the Shinra logo in the back…ughhhh dude I would kill for a prequel game on the people behind the Jenova project. The scientists that started it all.
GIVE ME MORE OF THE GOTHIC HORROR AND ACADEMIC MADNESS BLOSSOMING IN A HAUNTED MANSION STUFF!
300 notes
·
View notes