cassandracomplains

[cassandracomplains]

i rly hate that the s2 vibes are like. crowley is so smart and competent and right about everything and aziraphale is stupid and bumbling and wrong. if this is the direction s3 keeps going with its going to be so bad lmao

[cassandracomplains]

when good omens blogs transition into to being our flag means death and loki blogs

great job! v healthy of you for having more than one interest and moving onto your next hyperfixation in a timely manner. good on you

*unfollows*

[cassandracomplains]

i wish the go fandom (or ...even the show) would just abandon whole 'aziraphale hates bepop' thing, it just .. its not that funny + it smells tastes and quacks like racism .. i know hes supposed to be old fashioned and behind the times but i wish like .. specifically Black american art forms werent always the butts of those particular jokes :-) i know its just straight up textual that he doesnt like it, but everytime im reading a fic where 'eugh bepop' is mentioned or one of those clips is included in a compilation of his 'cute' moments i just ..

[cassandracomplains]

if you had to power to chnage only 1 thing about Season 2. What would it be?

just one thing??? easy.

i would cut the pre-fall scene. there are so many things in season 2 that i hate, but the one thing i absolutely cannot forgive is pre-fall scene. everything else i can brush aside or ignore or try to make better with headcanons or rewrites. but the pre-fall scene just feels too baked in. it changes the entire context for aziraphale and crowley's relationship in the worst way imaginable, and i want it gone.

[cassandracomplains]

alright i’m not saying this to shit on anyone’s ideas or theories because i don’t really fucking care, but me personally,,,,

I HATE THE IDEA THAT THERE IS SOME BIG THEORY OR PLAN OR SOME SHIT BEHIND AZIRAPHALES ACTIONS

LIKE… BRO THEIR WHOLE RELATIONSHIP IS ONE BIG RELIGIOUS TRAUMA/INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA ALLEGORY PLEASE HIW DO YOU NIT SEE THIS

like??? crowley asks too many questions, gets kicked out, realizes who he is, falls in love with the side he’s not supposed to?????? and aziraphale loves him too, but believes he has to be good for god, and he can’t bring himself to admit that he loves crowley because he is taught that it’s wrong????

WHY WOUKD YOU WANT TO PUT THIS OUT IN EXCHANGE FOR A THEORY PLEASE LET ME HAVE MY ANGST WHAT THE FUCK GUYS

i need to see my little gay beings emotionally FUCKED please leave me alone

[cassandracomplains]

Crowley's flaws: I think Gaiman accidentally wrote himself into a hole that he either doesn't see or doesn't know how to escape, and he fell into the hole when he decided to turn what was a political allegory into a psychologized relationship issue. Pratchett's understanding of evil is rooted in post-WWII thinking about totalitarianism, in which unthinkable acts are perpetrated by bureaucracies staffed by "normal" people, and resistance comes from individuals who become aware of what this routinization really conceals. This is consistent across the Discworld novels, not just GO. What GO does is take this point and filter it through C. S. Lewis' THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS (the hell-as-bureaucracy model, which NG and TP then extend to Heaven). In the novel, there's a direct line from Crowley's "hung out with the wrong people" to the moment at the airfield when he tries to reject Aziraphale's claim that they're both responsible for the mess the humans are in because they were "only doing our jobs." That's a textbook example of what we now call the Nuremberg defense ("just following orders/just doing my job"). The fandom loves romanticizing this aspect of Crowley's character--he has trauma! he's a proto-Marxist with demonic class consciousness!--but when Crowley busts out this kind of reasoning, he gives way to /evil/, just as Aziraphale does when he tries to justify the ways of Heaven to himself. Any fan who wants to be uncomfortable ought to read Hannah Arendt's EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM and then go back and look at Crowley's dialogue again, because boy howdy. But when it comes to their relationship, the transgression is not /personal/.

In the series, the political allegory has vanished, and the direct line runs from Crowley's "it's not my fault" to manipulating Aziraphale into killing the Antichrist. So far, so good, sort of? Gaiman had to remind the fandom that we aren't supposed to buy Crowley's excuses, all of which are bad. He's called out on the "why me" bit three times in the first episode alone. But by the end, there is no sign that Aziraphale understands that he has been manipulated, and no sign that Crowley understands that he did something wrong! The moral epiphany Crowley had in the novel vanishes, so we are left with a nasty /personal/ transgression that neither character understands as such. Aziraphale, by contrast, keeps owning up to his mistakes (at the bar, to Adam during the timestop, on the park bench). Part of this has to do with comedy and its lack of object permanence, so to speak. However, instead of facing up to the conflict it's created for itself, the series drops the whole thing like a Hellfire-hot potato, and so appears to conclude that there's nothing wrong when one character repeatedly takes advantage of another one's gullibility, sometimes in destructive ways. The question is to what extent the new writer has any opinions about this, or even notices.

i have no words........ 👀 a very interesting and thought-provoking take. i dig it. i never thought to look at the tonal comparison of the book vs. the show but this is... eye-opening. yes. YES. (and this doesn't mean that the characters nor the story are unlikeable. it means they have depth but that depth sinks into murky, terrifying, bottomless oceans just as much as clear, shiny, crystal-like reefs). YES.

also anon if you are comfortable pls message me direct i just wanna give u a lil virtual kiss a lil smooch✨

[cassandracomplains]

the thing about pre-fall azcrow is that i did genuinely enjoy some pre-fall fanfic where they were in love and then forgot each other after the fall or whatever. but i never wanted those things to be canon. i just liked playing in the sandbox

[cassandracomplains]

i’m gonna come out and say it now: i hate the swapping bodies theory

[cassandracomplains]

Good Omens (the book) is what definitely got me into writing (Discworld already got me back into reading, which says a lot, but Good Omens was the definite spark to take up the pen myself).

So excuse me if I am very, very salty about the direction the show is going.

It's as if they are setting out to remove everything Pratchett from Good Omens.

[cassandracomplains]

Hot Take: Heaven needs a Diversity and Inclusion Program if all these currently-employed Archangels in good-standing were passed over for promotion to Supreme Archangel

in favor of an ex-employee who who not only quit, but was literally fired, and has been retired for four years.

I hope, when this is all over and Aziraphale has retired for real this time, and lives in a South Downs cottage with Crowley,

that if there is still a Heaven--a reformed, kinder Heaven--that Muriel or Saraqael will get to lead it as Supreme Archangel.

Though if it actually it ends up being either of them, it'll probably be Muriel, that would make the most narrative sense.