I do gotta say tho, even tho I’m mad at aziraphale because he’s being a terrible boyfriend like what you said about the “I forgive you like” because WHAT. But also I really like the way the show really demonstrates the underlying cruelty of heaven and it’s angels. Really shows the hypocrisy of a group of beings who are supposed to do good, especially aziraphale who really buys into the heaven propaganda, who hurts people, particularly the person who means the most to him. Because like you said he fully just takes advantage of that devotion Crowley has for him. Insane, this shwo makes me INSANE
I missed this anon and yeah! The angels were one of my favourite parts of the season, and I think the strongest element aside from Neil Gaiman deciding he's just a simple man who wants to put his otp in situations. They are deeply awful and I kind of love them. They are the exact kind of moralizing hypocrites who are callous and cruel precisely because they think being on team good means everything they do is justified and it's actually impossible for them to be in the wrong (they're angels! is it even possible for them to do the wrong thing?).
but!! To me, they also seem like they're basically kids? Obviously they're not literally children, but there is this very consistent reoccurring joke about how childish/sheltered/immature they are. Muriel is the most obvious example, but the archangels come off like bratty twelve year olds to her sweet little kid.
Gabriel is basically teenager in love flipping off his family as he runs away with his backstreet guy. Uriel is constantly picking at Michael, Michael is playing at being in charge like it's a game, and it's ridiculously easy for both Aziraphale and Crowely to trick them obvious half assed lies. They're not allowed to ask questions! The Metatron treats them like badly behaved kids out past their curfew. At any point an old man with a beard may pop up to scold them and send them home, and they're all scared of doing something wrong by his standards and getting in trouble with this guy who is pointedly not God but who lines up exactly with the pop-culture idea of god the father, and who offers Aziraphale, among other things, a respite from the hard work of figuring out what the right thing to do is for himself. It's fine! You don't have to question the belief system you were born into or make a painful break with everything you've ever known! Aziraphale has had six thousand years on earth to grow up, but the other angels have been sitting in a sterile white box playing "i'm not touching you" games with each other and filing paperwork.
And I think that's extra interesting because this season also really emphasizes:
Heaven has Institutional Problems
Aziraphale isn't the only angel who's unhappy in heaven. Gabriel and Muriel were both completely miserable. They just didn't understand that they were unhappy because they'd never experienced anything else.
Angels who aren't Aziraphale can change and grow! There's very explicitly Gabriel being changed by love and Muriel growing up a bit on earth, and from a more fan-theory angle there's also Jimbriel, who I think is probably basically Gabriel minus the war and six thousand years of playing referee for Michael and Uriel while unleashing an assortment of plague and calamities on earth because that's God's will! Buck up champ.
We also get Gabriel and Beezelebub talking about how their underlings basically live for Armageddon, "if you can call that living." This is so bleak. They've all been on a six thousand year time out just dreaming of the day they get to beat the shit out of each other until they feel better, but it won't work because eternity is just more of the box.
Anyway I think it's going in a distinctly eden adjacent direction. Aziraphale is going to tempt those angels with knowledge and the capacity for change. I have veered so far from your ask anon i'm sorry you're right heaven really went all out on sucking this season & while Crowley and Aziraphale are both fucking it up Crowley refrains from being spectacularly cruel to Aziraphale about it and Aziraphale should learn to return the favour. I forgive you!! I forGIVE you. I forgive YOU. "you can be an angel again" is actually a worse thing to say than "you're a demon. i don't even like you." when he finally picks crowley over heaven i'm going to lose my mind.
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OKAY LISTEN NOT TO OVERTHINK but the Caleb in the mirror looked sad. Like, feeling really down and empty type of sad. Is that... Is that the way he felt in the human realm, before going to the Boiling Isles? Did he hide it from everyone, and only let himself feel it when he was alone, looking at his own reflection? Did he, like Luz, find a kind of belonging and acceptance on the BI that he didn't experience from the human realm?? (Also I think he had brown eyes.)
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So, I mentioned previously that Fashion Dreamer represents a significant improvement in the men's fashion over syn Sophia's past games, even if it still seems to be a lower priority compared to the women's. (It is sounding like there are fewer items for them on the whole, and I would not be at all shocked to hear there are fewer items for specific fashion niches than those equivalent niches in the women's fashion, but it is still meaningfully more diverse than what it was before.)
I promised examples.
Unfortunately, I only have one really good screenshot from my own 3DS, because I tend to take pictures of dialogue rather than inviting random characters to pose with me, and of the ones where you can clearly see what a guy is wearing, it's usually a character who's intentionally dressed as a sort of dorky scientist at best, and at worst...
Well, the best picture I have ALSO includes Johann, so you get to see him!
For those not reading the alt text, I feel it's important you know that that jacket of Johann's has TAILS. Also big gold buttons, I didn't note those because they're not really visible at all, and pants with a very gaudy floral pattern. So yeah, he's an Eccentric and Tortured Musician, so he dresses Like That. It's clearly intentional and not representative of the average character in the game (though he also has a student who dresses basically like him, with basically the same Eccentric and Tortured bit, who we see in a side quest.)
Oliver, on the other hand, is pretty much representative of how men in this series dress. He's a model, and as you can see, his default outfit (I checked the Style Boutique wiki to confirm, this is it) is... uh, kind of bland. He's not alone.
(Shout outs to the Style Boutique Wiki, where I got these screenshots.) This is Ricky, shown in his default outfit. (While there technically IS a menswear section in Fashion Forward, it's an extra you can only access from the title screen to dress up NPCs, and very limited. In the summer he'll take that jacket off, but that's it.)
I believe at least one of these outfits of Florian's is user-designed - they're both from Trendsetters, which is the game I've played the least of the four. Either way, not suits! But still not particularly interesting. But okay, maybe it's just that this STYLE is on the bland side? Let's try some others!
(In order: Vincent, Melvin, Ethan Quinn, Jim.)
I swear I didn't go looking for characters who are exclusively wearing T-shirts except Ethan, I am a bit limited in what the wiki has here. But also... yeah. I think Jim might be supposed to be a fan of bold fashion, given the belt and the hair? But you wouldn't know it from looking at the plain black t-shirt. Vincent and Melvin are a bit better - Vincent helps run the live music venue that opens midway through the game, while Melvin is in fact a nerd who doesn't take that much interest in fashion and only shows up to support one of the three central idols of the game, who also happens to be his best friend. Is it unfair to include him, then? No. Because at least his outfit is actually indicative of his character!
(Daisuke, Chad - though I believe he's renamed Brad in the North American release, and MC Mode, two photos. Tarquin, at the bottom, is one of my own screenshots.)
The same hat situation here is a bit amusing, but they were designed for different games and it makes sense to reuse fashion items like that between games - it let them add onto the wardrobe as the series went on, so there were a lot more items with different silhouettes and such by Styling Star. For the women. I think at least a few of these characters got to gain and lose jackets depending on the in-game season, and MC Mode here is a fashionable guy who gets to wear TWO outfits.
And the chic look isn't too bad - both Mode and Ethan wear it, so as you can see, there's definitely some range. I think Vincent might get to wear a leather jacket during the in-game winter, but I couldn't commit to it; I can't remember off-hand if Daisuke loses his jacket in the summer, though I hope not.
But yeah. You'll notice looking at all of these that even the rocker's outfit is a t-shirt and jeans. There ARE slightly more interesting options - those jeans might be distressed, there ARE leather jackets, and there are some pants with excess belts among the men's, I think - but not nearly as much as the women's fashion in the punk rock style. Tarquin's "lab coat" is clearly a suit jacket, and while it makes some sense not to make an entire unique item for one character, this game didn't even have men's fashion. I'm pretty sure they just used an existing suit jacket from Trendsetters. On the other hand, at least THAT ONE is reflective of his character. Daisuke's outfit is the closest the games come to athletic wear until Fashion Dreamer.
The characters in the later two games in particular were REALLY fun. There's a reason why I didn't have many screenshots just showing a male character facing forward, and none without dialogue - I actually really enjoy the writing here. Ethan wants to conquer the world with music, and multiple characters comment that this makes him sound like a supervillain. Tarquin is an endearing nerd who has a bunch of cute comments about all the items you bring in to make fashion items from. Florian likes bad puns.
But their outfits don't really tell you much about their personalities, where the female characters all do.
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