#power and authority

[drconstellation]

A Tale of Two Peacocks

The Relationship Between Gabriel and Michael

Some weeks ago I said I would take on the challenge of looking at the relationship between Gabriel and Michael, then I got sidetracked writing something else* - which is not always a bad thing. But I want to return to this because its too good not to do a post on it, and before I get too deeply involved in the other writing.

This is definitely going to involve some NSWF language - hey, I can't help this, its in the script - so the bulk of this is going to be below the cut. But the short of it is, they have a fairly low opinion of each other.

We need to go back to S1, where there is an interesting set of parallel scenes we should start our discussion with that spells it out for us. The first one is in S1xE2, and the other is actually in one of the deleted scenes from the cold opening of S1xE3, and they both use parallel characters to inform us of what Gabriel and Michael think of each other.

It turns out I've already talked about the first one, in this meta here, where I discuss how Newt is a parallel for Crowley.

Then [Frobisher] power-walks past. Newt is not even worth her time stopping for. "Need a hand, Dick?" *Snort* - and ouch. That's a below-the belt joke. She's just called him a wanker. In the US you might use the term jerk instead. Someone who's a bit egotistical and more in it for themselves than others. (and I never thought I'd be fact-checking the meaning of this word ever, but there's always a first time...) She's basically just equated him Gabriel, in my book (and in more ways than one.)

And I wrote all that months before I started writing my Crowley-Gabriel parallel/foil series, too.

The other thing about this first parallel scene is the character of Frobisher, who is dressed very much like a demon, but is actually the parallel character to Michael, as we see later on in the paintball fight at Tadfield Manor.

(Er, I know this is all a bit 2nd/3rd hand evidence, but the second scene is a bit more direct, so bear with me.)

The second one, in S2xE3, is the deleted bookshop opening scene.

Source: Script for the unaired scene of Aziraphale opening his bookshop in 1800

Oh, look at that. Somebody is being called a wanker. Again. This time it's Crowley calling Michael a wanker, however, and its only one step to the side with Crowley being a parallel character to Gabriel (and I challenge you to watch s1 again in this light after finishing this post, and see how many similarities you can see between Crowley and Gabriel showing through even back then.)

OK. So we've established that Gabriel and Michael both think each other are wankers at this point, but what else can we find out about them?

Peacock Fighting

I've written a couple of posts about peacock symbolism. Firstly, Michael is strongly associated with having many eyes - their Ophanim ring, their costume has eye motifs, and they are essentially head of surveillance for Heaven. So this made me think they might be the peacock referred to in the Job minisode.

But later, after more research, it became apparent the lines paraphrased in Job were definitely referring to Gabriel. (See also Judgement Day.) There are associations with both royalty and vanity there.

They are both peacocks, but for different reasons.

And they are also both in competition with one another.

Gabriel Doesn't Have A Desk

Desks are a symbol of power in western society.

The bigger, and more solid the desk in a corporate office, the higher up the person is.

The teacher at the front of the room, the authority in the room, has a bigger desk than the students.

Those desks offer protection to the person in authority sitting behind them. They mark a separation between that said authority and the masses they command on the other side. Only the most trusted get to come around to the same side that they are sitting on to be more intimate with them.

At work, your desk is connected to your identity there. Its your place in the organization. You may even individualize it with decorations.

Just take a look at what Newt was bringing on his first day to work in S1xE2:

Pens, a pen holder, notepads, a ball of rubber bands, a plant (a bromeliad, a plant that does well in fully shaded damp environments, just like Hell) and some rations. Er, I mean lunch. Given to him by God Frances his mother.

The travesty of the modern trend of "hot desking" is de-personalizing the employee. They are no longer a valued employee with a valued place, they're just another faceless cog in the grind.

We see Michael behind a desk as Duty Officer in S2. It's starkly clean and sharp and made of glass, as we would expect to find in Heaven. It's used a shield and badge of office when we see them fulfilling that role.

Michael doubts Gabriel has a desk, although Gabriel insists he does, even though we have never seen it. Yet he still requires the proverbial archive box for moving locations?

I'm just going to leave the parallel between Newt and Gabriel there for further discussion. Please do remember the bottom falls out of Newt's box in the car park, leaving him with an empty box, too.

(Muriel has a glass desk, too, but interestingly they don't have a chair. You might like to compare their encounter with Aziraphale in the Job minisode to the escapade with Crowley in the present day. There is volumes said without words.)

Just while we are on the subject of desks, thought you might like to compare Crowley's and Aziraphale's desks as well. They are always on about how much paperwork they have to do!

Sovereign versus Disciplinary Power

This is eventually going to turn into a discussion about fate versus free will at some point, but I do need to talk about the different types of power first, because I haven't done my long promised Power and Authority meta yet. The two concepts are closely related, and Gabriel and Michael are each acting as foils for a side of the concepts.

Gabriel represents sovereign power, the supreme legitimate power of the state. Power and action trickles down from the top, and punishment is almost a show of entertainment, but one designed to educate. "Oh, those angels Fell - if I do something bad, I might Fall, too!" And so Gabriel expects to Fall when he is given his trial, and Aziraphale when he lies to save Job's children.

Michael is representing disciplinary power, something that lies at the heart of society today. This is where power is spread among individuals, and individuals are more likely to do their own discipline merely because of an overhanging threat of a possibility they may get caught if they do.** Are they being watched? Who might see and report their transgression? Michael has eyes (and ducks) everywhere... So does Orwell's book 1984.

This is a very simplistic view, of course - reality is more complex than that, and is usually a combination of the two, but we have to start somewhere.

Now lets throw the fate vs free will components into the mix. Let us revisit the story of King Cnut and the tide.

The story, if you are not familiar with it, is that Cnut had his throne set on the beach and commanded the incoming tide to halt where it was, and not to wet his robes or feet. Of course, the tide kept rising and splashed the king, where he leapt up and declared his might and power as a king worthless compared to that of God. The story is meant to demonstrate his piety before Heaven, and that he was not the ultimate controller of all things - his sovereign power was limited.

They say time and tide*** wait for no man - we are at the mercy of what ever fate they bring us, and we can't manipulate that. That's decided by the supreme power, the ultimate sovereign power, so to speak.

Gabriel tends to take this line - he does not have control over the summoning of the Four Horsepeople, they are just happening as they supposed to, and that's not his department. Plausible deniability, baby! Back channels? What back channels, Michael?

So if you did want to have some power over it, some free will to control outcomes? But hang on - every one else has free will as well. Sounds a bit chaotic. Who's in charge? Nobody. Everybody. Welcome to Michael's world. They want the power, they're prepared to fight for it, for what they think is right - but so is everyone else.

But what if you were the creator of free will itself? Would you be The One to have control over time and the tides?

Tadfield Manor, Again

Michael is the archangel who throws Lucifer down from Heaven, and we see this play out at Tadfield Manor during the paintball fight, when we are shown that it is actually Frobisher/Michael who shoots the shot that hits Norman/Lucifer in the heart - although we are initially made to think its Nigel/Gabriel who did it. (One day I will teach my self how to make GIFs and make a GIF of this.)

Frobisher is the more competitive one at all times - she is the only other employee besides the naive Newt to put their hand up when Nigel asks who is looking forward to the Training Initiative and she asks Crowley and Aziraphale "Who's winning?" as she runs past them inside - to which Crowley presciently declares "You're all going to lose."

If you look at the extended scene in light of the above, you can see sovereign authority of senior manager Nigel/Gabriel is still floating around as a rather toothless tiger to the whims of fate, while everyone else is exercising their free will and disciplinary powers to try and control one another. And, as Crowley says, nobody wins. It's a lose-lose situation.

Michael is competing for an empty dream.

Gabriel is trying his best to survive something that is not what it seems.

And...I think I'll leave it there. Thanks for reading.

*I've started writing a multi-chapter human AU fanfic. But I'm a slow writer, and I'm not writing it in a linear fashion - because it has to be stuffed full of meta, of course - so I decided I better pull myself out of it before I got pulled in too far and finish a couple of things off so you didn't think I'd disappeared completely. I wasn't planning on doing one, but you know how these things go - one day an idea just pops into your head, the next thing the characters are talking to you and taking on their own life and a couple of thousand words later...

**There was a post about the oculus, (found it! thanks to gallup24) the round skylight window in the roof of the bookshop and the Panopticon, an infamous prison design where the prisoners can all see each other but can't see if the guard is watching them, but of course I've lost track of it, haven't I.

***The tides are controlled by the Moon and Sun, and ostensibly for this argument, by Heaven as well. They are fated to continue in their set orbit and/or path through the sky - or the Earth on it's orbit around the Sun, is probably the better way of looking at it.

[haggishlyhagging]

The rationale for male authority rested not only on biblical grounds but also on nature or natural law, on the generally accepted natural superiority of men. For nothing could be more self-evident than that the patriarchal conception of marriage, in which the husband was unequivocally the boss, was natural, resting as it did on the unchallenged superiority of males.

Actually, nature, if not deity, is subversive. Power, or the ability to coerce or to veto, is widely distributed in both sexes, among women as well as among men. And whatever the theoretical or conceptual picture may have been, the actual, day-by-day relationships between husbands and wives have been determined by the men and women themselves. All that the institutional machinery could do was to confer authority; it could not create personal power, for such power cannot be conferred, and women can generate it as well as men, a matter examined in greater detail in chapter 7. Thus, keeping women in their place has been a universal problem, in spite of the fact that almost without exception institutional patterns give men positions of superiority over them.

If the sexes were, in fact, categorically distinct, with no overlapping, so that no man was inferior to any woman or any woman superior to any man, or vice versa, marriage would have been a great deal simpler. But there is no such sharp cleavage between the sexes except with respect to the presence or absence of certain organs. With all the other characteristics of each sex, there is greater or less overlapping, some men being more "feminine" than the average woman and some women more "masculine" than the average man. The structure of families and societies reflects the positions assigned to men and women. The bottom stratum includes children, slaves, servants, and outcasts of all kinds, males as well as females. As one ascends the structural hierarchy, the proportion of males increases, so that at the apex there are only males.

When societies fall back on the lazy expedient—as all societies everywhere have done—of allocating the rewards and punishments of life on the basis of sex, they are bound to create a host of anomalies, square pegs in round holes, societal misfits. Roles have been allocated on the basis of sex which did not fit a sizable number of both sexes—women, for example, who chafed at subordinate status and men who could not master superordinate status. The history of the relations of the sexes is replete with examples of such misfits. Unless a modus vivendi is arrived at, unhappy marriages are the result.

There is, though, a difference between the exercise of power by husbands and by wives. When women exert power, they are not rewarded; they may even be punished. They are "deviant." Turk and Bell note that "wives who ... have the greater influence in decision making may experience guilt over this fact." They must therefore dissemble to maintain the illusion, even to themselves, that they are subservient. They tend to feel less powerful than they are because they ought to be.

When men exert power, on the other hand, they are rewarded; it is the natural expression of authority. They feel no guilt about it. The prestige of authority goes to the husband whether or not he is actually the one who exercises it. It is not often even noticed when the wife does so. She sees to it that it is not.

-Jessie Bernard, The Future of Marriage

[biblebloodhound]

Identifying so much with externalities, to the detriment of the internalities, is the ultimate bogus approach to life.

[enidtendo64]

TW: Heavily implied Child Abuse

Stowaway AU where Pacifica becomes a stowaway on the Stan-O-War 2 after trying to run away from home to California. Things don’t exactly work out as planned, but at least she’s got a “Summer Internship” away from her parents now!

[saydesole]

Black Authors

Happy Black History is Everyday

Toni Morrison 1931-2019

James Baldwin 1924-1987

Octavia E Butler 1947-2006

Langston Hughes 1901-1967

Maya Angelou 1928-2014

Ralph Ellison 1914-1994

Zora Neale Hurston 1891-1960

W.E.B Du Bois 1868-1963

[itzmellooo]

Counterpart to this post or something

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He might be bisexual, but he has a ship to run!

[Commission for June's Ko-Fi raffle winner @primtheamazing! Thank you for the support and for the oppertunity to draw more Tiger Tiger]

[sunderwight]

I understand people who view cumplane in a strictly platonic light, but Airplane did more or less go "huh, if I was writing Luo Binghe he'd have already pushed down Cucumber bro a dozen times by now, the fucking Shen Qingqiu smut train would never end, they'd be doing it in every position and on every possible surface" at one point so I'm afraid I just, cannot agree.

[mentally-ill-for-bes]

So funny Viktor chooses to present himself to Jayce as a white-golden robot (considering it is shown he could possess one of his followers) despite his representative colors being purple and blue (during s2 arc 1 and arc 2 and as the Herald Machine). But for the very specific purpose of convincing Jayce to join him, he's represented in the colors associated with Mel. Literally CATWALKING into the room, which is an action associated with Mel too

[superiorcatholicinspiration]

Daily Mass: Jesus has power and authority over evil. Catholic Inspiration

Jesus casts out a demon in the synagogue in Capernaum, revealing his power and authority as the Holy One of God. Mass Readings – Tuesday of the 22nd Week of the Year *************** Catholic Inspiration Archives

[bet-on-me-13]

City Spirits awaken.

So! City Spirts are basically God's sustained by the people in their Cities. Some are Gods born from the belief and people of a City, others are God's who Bind themselves to Cities to sustain themselves in periods of low worship.

Almost all Major Population Centers have some kind of City Spirit bound to them.

The Personification of Los Angeles who slept with Constantine was born from her City, but she was young and weak compared to other City Spirits.

Lady Gotham is an Ancient Spirit who holds immense Power, but purposefully bound herself to the new and growing city of Gotham so she could sleep for a few millenia without worrying about sustaining Worship. She has been asleep for Centuries.

Actually, most City Spirits are Asleep.

Millenia Ago, the most powerful Gods and Spirits of the Infinite Realms fled the Rule of Pariah Dark. They didn't agree with his ambitions to conquer the Living Realm, and didn't want to let him use their Power against the Living Realm either.

So they Bound themselves to newly forming Cities and put themselves into Deep Sleep to avoid his Control. They have been asleep for Millenia now, waiting for the day Pariah would be overthrown so they could return to the Infinite Realms safely.

Then they day came. A New King was Crowned.

And the Cities began to wake up.

[hasmaj]

If you delegate task, you create followers.

If you delegate authority, you create leaders.

- Craig Groeschel

[biblebloodhound]

Being unjust has its consequences.

[hiddenincommand]

“Bound, caged, and stripped of all autonomy—this is where you belong. My will is the air you breathe, my command the only purpose you serve. You exist for my amusement, to crawl, to kneel, to be broken under the weight of my absolute dominance. Submission isn’t a choice; it’s your reality, and I am your god, your tormentor, your master—merciless, unrelenting, and supreme.”

[playfully-sadistic]

Aww, you poor sweet thing, never had an authority figure treat you quite like you needed, now you're craving such an inappropriate one - a firm, guiding hand, someone to take away your responsibilities when you get overwhelmed with them, someone to tell you "I'll handle this", someone to make you shiver with their mere presence and the way they look at you.

Someone you can kneel down next to, a hand soothingly running through your hair, while they read a book and take a sip of their drink in between, the room filled with gentle quietness and peace, and - despite a long history of issues with authority - when they tell you to get up and fetch them a snack, you're perfectly conditioned to reply "Yes, Sir" and obey, like nothing's more natural to you.