archangelween

[archangelween]

Oh my god. You know why the Bentley turns every tape into Queen? But behaves for Aziraphale?

Crowley is a jesus figure: the king of the world. But he's only male on the outside, it's just a shape he takes. Like his often overdramatic reactions are just an act he puts on.

He's drama incarnate, he's only male on the outside, he dresses like an aging rocker.....

A literal dramatic queen in rock n roll drag.

Queen....of rock n roll.

OF COURSE the Bentley knows who he really is and blasts it at full volume.

Aziraphale, though? Well. Bentley knows Az is a.....southern pansy, a king of classic style, like the dramatic kings of old.

[archangelween]

God's been playing her game over and over for eternity trying to get a different result.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. It's unfathomable. Ineffable.

God's insane. Literally the architect, the god, of the insanity we live in. More insane than any demon.

She loves best those who emulate her, who come closest to her image.

Demons are insane. They're down in the basement. You know, hell. Those who are insane need to find god. The satire version of that isn't that they're opposites but that they're the same: you need not find god to change yourself, but because you belong together.

They belong in hell where they're closest to the one who loves them best: god. They're the supposed enemies of god. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, which is an insane thing to do and not how it should work. It's not how it should work, but it is, because everything god does is insane, unbelievable, ineffable.

Demons aren't down with the devil, but wallowing in insane filth with god. That's not Satan down there, it's Jesus, aka another face of god.

If Jesus is in hell, Satan is running heaven. We haven't seen god because god is absent, leaving her minions in her place. The chief minion is Metatron. Satan isn't trying to run heaven the way it should be, the way he would, but according to the wishes of god: he's a minion.

Keep your friends close but your enemies closer: we saw with Job that god and Satan are fucking with everyone else. If you're fucking with people, things are not as they seem, ie, you're being lied to. Because everything is insane. Backward. Front to back.

Front to back because what they're really doing is fucking with each other. We're just collateral damage. You know, dolls in their games.

[archangelween]

I would not be surprised if time is weird in s1 too. Was this actually Newt arriving, and he was going the wrong way? Was this the next day, instead of the immediate aftermath of the previous scenes?

Why is Frobisher suddenly outside the building when she was just in it, when Newt gets fired from the new job for blowing the power?

Here she is among the employees listening to the paintball announcement, she's behind Newt and the guy talking

And here she is again in the same place as the power goes out:

But here she is outside walking into the building as Newt is leaving after being fired

Why is she outside? With all her stuff as if she was just arriving?

[archangelween]

God's playing an ineffable game. In a game, you make up the rules. There is no reason you can't change them later too.

The game is reality.

The point is: how much is what we told ourselves, and how much is actually unchangeable?

People will always fight and resist changing the rules, "because it's not right", because "that means it's not the same anymore". Because the current reality is more important than what could be.....but why? What's the problem with it not being the same anymore?

Can't improve anything unless it's not the same anymore. Things do have to change.

Who wants to change the rules? The Adversary, whose title is Satan. Who used to be the bringer of light.

Why would god, who is traditionally the source of light, metaphorically representing goodness, need....a bringer of light?

God lacks light. That's why she needs a bringer of light.

Because god's playing a game, treating people like dolls. Lucifer is change. Lucifer is morality.

Not Jesus, because Jesus is god, who lacks light, who's playing with dolls.

[archangelween]

Agreed, all that matters. I've heard that Judaism doesn't have Eden at all, and they don't have hell. Not sure if that's "in general" or if it's a minority though.

Jesus was not the only apocalyptic preacher, he was just the one who got famous. I kind of wonder if Jesus was sent to die either to throw another wrench in the works, or because God saw what was already happening: people were treating each other as if everyone was evil, and so in order to have her game be interesting instead of full of the same thing, she had to say something along the lines of "it doesn't have to be this way".

That would fit in with the idea of sin not being sin, and with the shades of gray--"forgiving people" and showing another way is good, but refusing to say sin doesn't exist is bad, and doing through human torture and sacrifice is also bad. It explicitly connects suffering with purity. It's also the whole idea of a game, of "blorbos": you sure can torture fake people, but not real people. You sure can make up horrific rules and deceive your blorbos, but you can't do that to real people.

Which is a whole other point it makes: dehumanizing people makes things worse, and it's a lie. There are not grades of people, they're all the same stock. It's just names for sides. Dehumanization does not purify, it does not get rid of sin, that's entirely something you choose to do orthogonal to that. Punishment only makes things worse: we see that with what happens to the demons in hell, which affected how heaven worked, and with the rise of Christianity after Jesus.

if the fly was outside the box when aziraphale went to pick it up. and the fly is his "him". do you think the fly lead him to aziraphale? from where ever he was before?

[archangelween]

What if Crowley appears to know the future because he's already seen it all? And that's also why he's a little off on the timing, the details?

It's not just s2 that's going round and round till they get it right. They've been doing it always. The s1 we saw was realities bleeding into each other of all the other times round the bend. That's all the inconsistencies. It's more obvious in s2, maybe because that section has been redone more. Or maybe because that section is what varies the most.

Crowley doesn't time travel, he's just seen it all before. He's played the game before.

[archangelween]

Canonically the angels and demons are "from the same stock". What's the "stock"? Well, god herself. She created them. She's literally the Alpha, of alpha and omega. The origin. There's also the idea that, in mythology, people were first created as doubles--four arms, four legs, and then later split into two separate people, doomed to wander without their other half. Their soulmate. Two sides of the same coin.

We've twice seen angels and demons treated as "missing their other half", A&C and then Gabriel and Beez. Jesus and Satan are also depicted as two sides of the same coin; canonically in the show, because heaven and hell are not all that different, and it follows the thread that the match for an angel is the demonic counterpart.

There is also the very old idea that Satan wasn't in fact sinning in his rebellion, but was ordered to do it by god--so that eventually people could learn right from wrong and be redeemed. You need to have two sides so people can choose. Heaven and hell had to exist, someone had to take the fall. Satan literally "takes the fall" and becomes a demon on god's orders. Again, we haven't seen either the war or the fall depicted directly in the show--and there's no reason to have not done that unless it would change the way we view things. We do see the war metaphorically among humans during the paintball war; reading that allegorically, literally neither side is wrong. God herself calls it a team bonding activity to identify leadership; this isn't a "woe are stupid angels", she's delighted about this. She does not care who wins; it's about the game for her, not about who's right, because there isn't anyone who's right. It's the side of obedience vs the side of what's right, a common moral conflict: do you trust in your leaders, those giving the orders, or are you more sure of yourself? Should you be allowed to say no and overrule those above you? Does hierarchy make right, does might make right? It's all just names for sides, like the angels and demons, heaven and hell.

Names for sides: like two sides of a coin, half of a whole: your left and your right. Aziraphale and Crowley. Gabriel and Beez. Jesus and Satan.

Sides often flip around, too--sometimes obedience is better because others really do know things you don't, but sometimes speaking up is better because hierarchy doesn't convey superiority, in either knowledge or deed. Sometimes obedience to the letter and not the spirit can save you and others; sometimes obedience ends in death and damnation, sometimes obedience means you hurt others, and sometimes obedience is the only way to save yourself. What's more important? Well....it depends. It swaps around. You have to choose your side every time.

Obedience meant Satan took the fall, swapped sides. Or at least...someone led the rebellion, and someone went to hell. Doesn't have to be the same person, does it? Not when they're two sides of the same coin, and can pass for each other.

Like how A&C swap sides, frequently. Not just literally playing for the other team, but taking each others' roles when raising Warlock: Crowley is the gardener, Az the carer, but they swap. At the end of S1, they do it again: Crowley is the questioner and the fighter, but it's Az who calls up god herself to demand why and try to save everyone. Crowley as an angel saying it's not just wallpaper and Az saying it's the Plan. Repetitions, infinities, over and over again, like a flipping a coin. Beez saving an angel, and Gabriel taking a fall to save himself. Just like Crowley saved an angel in Paris.

Except god likes threes, so two sides can't be all of it. Where's the third wheel? Shades of gray! Neither one side or the other, but both and neither. Morality, immorality, amorality. Heaven, hell, human. Angel, demon....god. But it's never that simple, is it? They all come from the same stock. God isn't wrong that it's "not a dark and stormy night", but she's not telling you the whole picture: ambiguity, not quite amorality but also neither moral nor immoral. An omission isn't the same as a lie but when you do it deliberately, then it sure is: you have to choose every time what's important. For god, there's nothing but that game: she does not choose based on morals but on what makes a good game. Like we do in fiction, in games.

Who has free will? Humans, explicitly. Angels and demons? Well, that's back to the rules creating reality: if you tell someone they can't do a thing, and they don't know any better what a lie is....if they trust you completely, such that they'll jump out a window at your command....how do we expect that to turn out? Gabriel's been playing the "lie for the greater good" game since before Job, because during Job he's already good enough to tell Az what to do without crossing any lines himself, and making it seem like it's all Az's idea. That's the opposite of how god acts: she lies to deceive, rather than Gabriel's lies to help. Quite literally the greater good, no wonder he was upset about that line in s1.

That leads us to consider what's "the opposite" as a concept, ie what's the other side of the coin, and what's the third wheel? Forwards, backwards, mixed up. This falls in with the idea of "satanic messages", ie if you play something backwards you get something evil. Like angels, turned backward are demons. Demons, flipped, are angels. The clock in s2 is also backwards; but if you flip it, it's magically corrected. The "sides", including heaven and hell, are reflections of each other. This slides in with the idea of multiple timelines and infinities, renewal and rebirth: the present and what we see has already happened many times over, and if you flip it around you get to see those reflections. Aka....run the show backwards and you get "satanic messages", the future and past. Flip the first season around, you get the story of creation. Second, you get the story of Jesus coming to earth. Third? Well, forward I'm guessing it's the apocalypse, a war they avert; so reflected, it's probably the Great War and the fall, aka it's the war they chose to have and consequences that weren't avoided.

I have a post on some of the scenes I've "run backwards". In it, God is a demon, she quite literally says "I don't see the point of morality", and we learn that Jesus and Satan swapped places.

>You are advocating for Her to control autonomous beings and make decisions for them.

Again, this is basic god apology. I said the opposite of that.

The classic line is "god the father", and "we are all his children". Because, the classic defense goes, we are far too ignorant to comprehend the ineffable.

Do you know who's far too ignorant to comprehend that drinking bleach is not a good idea? Because they literally know nothing?

Children.

The angels were created with zero knowledge of anything, except being told they can't disobey. They literally did not know what a "lie" is, or that anyone would do that. They had zero capacity to "think for themselves".

God let the angels drink bleach. Because, as classic apology goes, that's just life and it would be super duper sinful to interfere with that.

Everyone is born knowing nothing. What you teach people matters, because they don't know how things work. They do not have the concept of "lie" or "ambiguity" or "abuse", they lack the ability to think for themselves, until they are taught they can. But they can't do that if they're explicitly taught that thinking is wrong. That disobeying is....sinful. That asking for help from the person who created you, your Father, is batshit insane and a grievous sin to be harshly punished.

You stop an infant from drinking bleach because that's common sense and the most basic level of care required. You put up a sign on a bridge that's out or on electric fences because.....people do not know and can't be expected to know the bridge is out or that they're going to get shocked. Because providing information is the basic level of care required. If they go ahead and drive off the bridge anyway, they did actually choose to exercise free will. But they can't make that choice if you don't tell them. If you neglect them.

It's not autonomy. Not giving people enough information to make their own choices is neglect. Like a dealer who won't tell you the rules. Explicitly who god is.

As I said, dictatorship and neglect are two sides of the same nasty coin. Neither are acceptable, and defending neglect as "respect" isn't either. But they're a false dichotomy, there are other options beyond those. Defending neglect as care is classic god apology. It is literally the "problem of evil".

People who treat others like dolls do in fact care about and love their dolls. Treating people like dolls doesn't mean you hate your dolls, or that you can't love them. Love does not magically engender decent behavior. Love does not stop people from being foul. Possession is also called "love", and so is jealousy. Neither make for helpful decision guides. People famously love their blorbos while rotating them on a spit. That's exactly what god is doing.

if the fly was outside the box when aziraphale went to pick it up. and the fly is his "him". do you think the fly lead him to aziraphale? from where ever he was before?

[archangelween]

i bet in heaven they're still on 3g phone service because they have to purify all the technology of sin but in hell they've got fucking 7g just blasting terabytes worth of the hottest demon porn right into your prostate

[archangelween]

And if the bible is a lie, then lies in the bible are slips of god's tongue--truth. That's why Aziraphale likes the misprint bibles: he's looking for the truth among the lies. He knows the great plan is garbage, and he's trying to find how things actually work.

And if errors are truth....misspelling isn't an error but seeing the truth among the lies. It's not wrong, it's just not quite right yet.

And if errors are truth, inconsistencies are too. I think the first version, like with the first Anathema drawing in s1 vs the one we see when Aziraphale opens the book, are the "lie". In order to have an error, you must first have the original, against which the error is measured and discovered. So the first is the lie, the following errors are closer and closer to the truth.

That's why there's those infinity symbols, and that's why it looks like there's timeloops: we HAVE been around the block multiple times, because in order to correct an error, you must first make it. Just like humanity has done through all of time, scientifically: the sun doesn't go round the earth, but you have to try something to understand the world around you, how things work, even if you're wrong. You can always....fix it later. Except your next attempt isn't guaranteed to be any better, any more true. Knowing what's wrong doesn't tell you what's right.

And if the world is based on lies, if sin is therefore the default state not because sin is evil but because being wrong is how everyone starts out? Sin isn't actually bad. You're supposed to sin, it's expected.

The demons aren't evil, they had been or are closer to the truth than anyone else. Evidenced by their inability to spell. This is why we haven't learned anything about the War and the Fall, it would give the game away, and we the audience would not have gone through "sin". Would not have learned that being wrong isn't bad, it's expected.

Literally expected, in the sense that that's god's game. You are supposed to defy her, sin--because sin is an attempt to be better than god.

What's the point of the game? To learn what's right. Because when god put the apple in the garden, that was the apple of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Knowledge of what's right. Meaning...god lacks that knowledge, she's wholly amoral and not at all omniscient. God lacks even the most basic sense of fairness, which even babies and animals have. Hence her game to "figure it out". God's writing herself fiction in the same way we use it: to explore what things mean, what's right and wrong. To get other people to figure it out for her.

Catch is, her fiction is our real lives. Just like Crowley and Az were treating Soho like dolls on a game board. It's not harmless fiction when you apply it to real people.

An iteration of god's game is our actual history. I think Crowley remembers echoes of the past iterations, if not complete full memory of them. Those echoes are what we see as inconsistencies in the show.

And if the first version of a thing is a lie, then the "future" inconsistencies are actually better. This is the opposite of the church's claim that changing things is evil, because god....doesn't play dice with the universe.

Except we know she does. What can be destroyed by the truth, should be. Including god herself, who is, canonically and thus biblically, a literal body of lies.

An author making a statement that's not in canon is called word of god.

The Bible is the word of god.

Ergo, in GO, the Bible, which is the word, is not canon.

It's balderdash. Piffle.

In GO, there's also the quite literal Word of God as stuff she says. We know she's been absent for almost all of eternity; there is no word of god. She left quite soon after laying down the Great Plan.

The Great Plan, which is the word of god....which is poppycock.

Death of the author means you ignore what god thinks, you make your own decisions. God doesn't control you, and should not control you. God is irrelevant. You must kill the author to achieve this, and make yourself God in her stead. That's called heresy. It's what Satan tried to do in his rebellion, the war in heaven.

Hail Satan, hail yourself, depose god and change the story.

Like Adam did. Like the demons who fell tried.

[archangelween]

An author making a statement that's not in canon is called word of god.

The Bible is the word of god.

Ergo, in GO, the Bible, which is the word, is not canon.

It's balderdash. Piffle.

In GO, there's also the quite literal Word of God as stuff she says. We know she's been absent for almost all of eternity; there is no word of god. She left quite soon after laying down the Great Plan.

The Great Plan, which is the word of god....which is poppycock.

Death of the author means you ignore what god thinks, you make your own decisions. God doesn't control you, and should not control you. God is irrelevant. You must kill the author to achieve this, and make yourself God in her stead. That's called heresy. It's what Satan tried to do in his rebellion, the war in heaven.

Hail Satan, hail yourself, depose god and change the story.

Like Adam did. Like the demons who fell tried.

[archangelween]

There is evidence of Jesus and Lucifer swapping places. Of God being a demon. Whether you agree is a separate question.

Frankly your "God is good" is the standard religious defense of the Christian god. GO is a satire of all that, it's laughing at how ridiculous "but it's moral to let people do evil" is, because there isn't a binary between treating people like dolls you should have total dominion over, and letting your child eat bleach. Control vs neglect; neither are moral choices, it's a false dichotomy. You can help people without dehumanizing them. We do it every day. Only a dictator would go "you're on your own if I can't control you, this is generous of me and good for you". Aka: if you need help, clearly you don't deserve autonomy, yeah? Clearly there is no other option.

You're supposed to think God is good. "Supposed to" and "it's true" are not the same thing. God is good is the rule, not reality. God said is a rule, like simon says, it's not reality. Might makes right again. Really weird how "I did this one less than decent thing" means humans are evil and deserve hell, but for god "I could have been worse" is incontrovertible evidence she's morally superior. Instead of the threat and confession it actually is. A promise not to drown everyone again isn't kind, it's deranged. You know what kind of person says shit like that?

Evil doesn't exist, it's a choice. It's every choice. A person is not capable of being only good or only evil, that's what shades of gray is. Every choice can be different. God herself is not an exception, she too chooses. And she lies about it.

GO is a satire. They aren't going to skewer every other part of religion but then turn around and go "except god, she's impeccable". God is the entire basis of the religion, it's not exempt. It does not get special treatment. Only religion claims god is literally above everything, only religion judges their neighbors for things they excuse in their dictator. That what Go is laughing at. You can and should judge the almighty, Crawley. An ineffable plan that does not exist is not evidence of good, it's a different kind of immoral: did you plan to let your kid eat bleach or did you sit there with glee claiming you wanted him to do the right thing and couldn't possibly tell him anything because that would "violate autonomy"? Again, ignorance isn't bliss: that's the point of the apple.

And if god gave up the knowledge of good and evil, to make that apple? You can't expect god to have knowledge of good and evil. Can't give up your cake and have it too.

You can, however, eat your cake and have it too, if "cake" is not cake but the same thing it represents in the Lockdown audio. That cake is not destroyed in its eating, continuing to exist for another round. Infinite rounds, one could even say.

if the fly was outside the box when aziraphale went to pick it up. and the fly is his "him". do you think the fly lead him to aziraphale? from where ever he was before?

[archangelween]

>The God in the S1 narration to me seems very much into people making their own choices and not at all down for any Ineffable Plan.

God is the one who tells us that she's playing an ineffable game of her own devising. She calls herself a dealer who won't tell you the rules, etc. That's called horror. And she's clearly amused by it. God is an actual demon by nature, as opposed to the other demons who are forced into terrorizing people.

>What if anything that's happening is the fault of The Metatron-- an evil angel telling everyone that he speaks for God when he really can do no such thing?

I think the Metatron is indeed Lucifer, but that's because Jesus is a horror just like god herself, and he and Lucy swapped places after the fall. Just like A&C have been swapping places, playing for the other team. Literally and figuratively. Because Jesus is a horror who loves running hell and Lucifer is the "good guy". Lucifer played Jesus on earth, he's the one who died on the cross. The Satan we saw in s1 was Jesus putting on airs.

>God can do nothing about any of it because if She intervenes, She's robbing all of Her creations of free will. If even one of them doesn't have it, none of them do.

This is the problem of evil. We have seen that standing by and doing nothing is treated as immoral. Futzing around worrying about the consequences to yourself or burbling about how to justify it does not excuse inaction. If the worst of the demons would intervene to help people, and god would not, then the worst of the demons is infinitely morally superior to god.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

Much as any other game we ourselves play, much as any other fictional story we tell about serial killers and chainsaw murderers....she set up the rules. She set up the game. Fictionally enjoying a chainsaw massacre is fine, because it's not real. As we have explicitly been told, these are real people and you can't treat them like blorbos. Which circles back around to the nature vs nurture, the "rules are reality"....

>Or, God didn't actually program anybody. What if God loves Her creations and gave them free will and dominion over their universe?

I said "program" specifically because that's what rules=reality is. Does it matter if you innately create someone who is unable to obey, vs telling a completely naive person that they can't disobey? It's what we do to children: expect them to obey, hit them when they don't, regardless of who's in the right because children have zero ability to judge for themselves or to fight back. Indeed, "fighting back" is punished by being hit more. Simply "talking back", even when the child is in the right, is punished. You cannot question anything, because that's called disobedience, disloyalty, treason--that's the fall.

Might does not make right. Rules are not reality. But that's what we teach, and that's what people do not question....because questioning reality is treason. Change is not possible. Might makes right means that what the mightiest wants, she gets, and that's what makes reality. You can't change that until.....you have your own house and make your own rules, which isn't actually changing the status quo at all because now you're the embodiment of might makes right.

Tons of feudal fiefs mean you are the king in your domain, and you don't change a single thing about how stuff works that makes you king. Because the rules were already established, that nobody can question those above them.....so as much as you tell yourself you created Eden for your underlings, if they can't leave, if they believe they aren't allowed to question anything---that's not all the different than every other fief lord. How are your underlings to know you won't hurt them just like everyone else would for being treasonous? That's literally what "god is testing me" means. None of them respond with "she's evil and this is wrong". Because loyalty tests, shit tests, are considered perfectly fine, because might makes right and we can't question her. So....obviously.....anything god does is the highest of morality and she deserves to be abusive, because dontchasee it's not actually abuse, you deserve it. Just like Job.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

That's the ineffable game. Will anyone throw caution to the wind and break the system? It's great entertainment. Tell people it's impossible, because you made the rules like that, and then see if people will cause an apocalypse--that's what upending the system IS--to.....just to talk to you.

So yeah, god is cheering on her own chainsaw massacre victims. She's got the chainsaw. Just like we cheer on fictional people in horror movies, but listen, they're not real, and we created that story. We are the fictional serial killer. God did the same thing....except with real people. She created a horror game with real people, she's the one chasing them down to kill them. She will not stop, she will go ahead and kill them. She's the knife at Issac's throat, but this time she does not tell Abraham to stop.

Under might makes right and the rules are reality, that means everything that happens to you because you can't stop god--and no one can stop her--is your fault and you deserve it. Like Job said. If you do not fight back, if you do not win, you deserve it, and it's not abuse, it's "edification", suffering makes you a saint. If you're not a saint, then clearly you just need to suffer more.

>God never says there's an Ineffable Plan-- She says there's an Ineffable Game. A game means everyone has free will & is making their own choices. It's Heaven that's trying to tell everyone that they're doing the will of God but God herself is saying go live free so that's why I trust Her more than The Metatron. :) I know, there's so many theories-- it's great fun!

But rules are reality, might makes right, and so anything god says is treated as immutable reality. We see this a lot in Star Trek with the "vulcans never lie/you lied/no, I implied or made an error". Except god does lie, because she told everyone she doesn't--that's what "don't question me" means: she is never wrong. Which is a lie.

God wrote the Great Plan. With the intent that it be carried out. To see how people act--again, she's the chainsaw serial killer. It is not mercy if she does not kill you, it's just serial killer behavior. Mercy requires that you believe you deserve to die, that she's right to torture people. She told people that the plan is reality, deliberately deceiving people.

Who has free will when you're told something is immutable reality? When the rules say it's not, and rules are reality? Unless you want to die--and nobody ever chooses death, do they? so predictable--you cannot fight. Nothing changes. You can't do anything. Because you will get caught, god will know because she said she has omniscience, you can't get away with it, you can't overthrow god under might makes right. Fighting immutable reality means you die, means you deserved eternal torture. Means you were wrong to do it.

And again, if everyone has free will and these are real people, what does it say about god that she sits back and allows all this? Deliberately deceives them and does not correct them? Is she just too stupid to understand that's what she's doing? We don't even tolerate that from toddlers. She cannot be both that stupid and omniscient. She also cannot be called benevolent. It's outright neglect. Toddlers also have "free will" but if your parents go "oh well, he's drinking bleach, freeeee willllll" that is called abuse through neglect and you lose custody. If god is lord our father, then at the very least hold her to the standards we expect of even the most incompetent parents.

>The Fly is… I think it's like… think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself [...] Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like.

It is a depiction of trauma, yes, but the reason isn't "this is ptsd" in universe. If you take files off a computer, you can still access them if you go get the external drive. The fly is a container, storage, and he can access that with great effort. But his head isn't built for that anymore--you can't just plug in any drive and expect it to work, a floppy disk doesn't fit into modern computers. You can still get the info off it with great effort, but it'll be corrupt. You have to access it correctly or you lose everything. Doing it with great effort results in partial or corrupt access.

He could have also chosen which memories to keep, which to shunt to the fly. He didn't keep "all the angels shouting for joy", he seems to have only kept his song. Factory reset, with a few exceptions. Wipe the drive. Except the fly isn't actually a computer so having "leaks", or the fly/aka Gabriel choosing to back port some more info can happen.

Gabriel is a stand in for Christ this season (the role swaps around, but mostly it's him). In the bookshop attack, it's the harrowing of hell; when Christ died, his body didn't go to hell but his spirit did. That's the split: it's why the demons reject Gabriel (not literally, metaphorically) and it's why Crowley is the one who saves the people and goes up to heaven. Jim is the body, the fly/Gabriel is the soul, and Crowley is the divinity.

I think that's also why Jim tries to kill the fly. They are not completely separate things; what your body does affects your soul, vice versa. If you kill your soul, you get to live free of sin when it goes to hell and you stay behind. But giving that up means you don't know who you are, you live in ignorance. Ignorance is bliss only if what you don't know doesn't affect you. What you don't know can still kill you, as with the dealer won't tell you the rules or even let you see at all.

>And FYI-- I'm really excited to find someone else who also thinks that Gabriel knew Aziraphale was lying in the Job minisode and went along with it because he could get away with it since Crowley and Aziraphale had given him a way out of killing the kids. 😊

:D Gabriel is the one who "suggests" to Aziraphale that there is a way to save the kids at all. Idk if he knew Az was rogue already; he could have, given what we suspect about him and the Ark, but I think Gabriel just takes every opportunity to plausibly deny there's other ways to do things. Gabriel was playing the "wiggle room" interpretative dance long before Az ever tried to bend the rules. His idiot persona is cover for that.

if the fly was outside the box when aziraphale went to pick it up. and the fly is his "him". do you think the fly lead him to aziraphale? from where ever he was before?

[archangelween]

@vidavalor (on the godfathers convo and some kind of protection on the shop to prevent entry by heaven/hell):

I don't think it would pass it at all. An angel and a demon drinking wine and shaking hands and plotting together to raise the kid to be normal and neither evil nor good? Heaven & Hell would destroy C&A for merely one of those, let alone the rest. They were also wasted and flirting five minutes before that. Just the fact that they feel comfortable enough to get drunk... they had candlelit wine in 1941! They have a sense of privacy in the shop otherwise what's the point?

What they actually said was "It would be a shame if I failed", and then if Az went and made sure he failed, then the kid would not turn out either good or evil, just normal. That passes muster, because all of those things are true. It WOULD be a shame for Crowley if he failed, if Az won then the kid would be good, and if neither of them won then the kid would be normal. Those are all literally true.

The secondary conversation is that "it would be a shame if I failed" is double speak, meaning, enthusiastically, "Please make me fail". Just like the wall slam in s1 wasn't Crowley being angry, but flirtation: what he says and what he means are not necessarily, if ever, the same thing. What someone else thinks he said and what he actually meant are generally different: banana fish etc, people hear what they want and not the magic spell he's casting. Lying in plain sight, lying with the truth.

I'm also not arguing there is no protection, I'm saying it's based on social convention. Belief in the rules. Don't have the authority. Not actual physically impossible for anyone to show up. It's simply rude, and rule breaking, which we know both sides don't do in a way they can get caught at.

Which is exactly what we see when the demons/angels pop right into the shop in s2, and when Metatron isn't invited in either but yet strolls right past all these things. Because he's literally a higher authority, and rules don't matter to him.

Rules become reality when you believe hard enough that there's "nothing you can do". But that does not mean they literally are reality. After all, rules were made to be broken, weren't they? God quite literally made it all up, and things can always change. Physically impossible is not a thing to angels and demons who work identical miracles, who are not different from each other but believe they are. Belief makes things real, up until someone else believes differently. Is that not the power of miracles? "I want it to be different, so it is". God's game is seeing if people can change their minds, break the rules, damn the consequences.

if the fly was outside the box when aziraphale went to pick it up. and the fly is his "him". do you think the fly lead him to aziraphale? from where ever he was before?

[archangelween]

@annoyingwerewolfcrusade

No exactly, but it could lead him there. Have you read the metas from @vidavalor that has written some about Gabriel, and his personal friendship with Azi and the knowledge that he has about the relationship between Crowley and Azi And the protection that he has given them thru the ages. The fly is also in one of those metas, are very really interesting

Yeah Gabriel is acting a part he does not want to play, just like Crowley and Az must. He's known about them, and frankly I think he's always trying to avoid "doing his heavenly duty" aka taking action against anyone for sin. We see him playing the idiot in the Job flashback....so that he can let the kids live. The only time we see him actually angry is when he's got to obliterate Az at the end of s1, because he can no longer weasel out of having to mete out "justice". He is angry because he does not want to kill Az, but he has no choice.

He has to trumpet the party line but he does not believe in it. If he does not know about it then he need not do anything.

So if all his Gabriel-ness is in the fly, I think that fly literally has a mind of its own, just as Jim has a different mind of his own. Jim isn't just a body, he's the factory reset, he does have a mind of his own but I think angels were originally created to be trusting and to obey. Part of the point of god's game is to see if they can defy their programming. She literally set them up to fail, and wants to see if the impossible is possible: being someone else. Because if you are created to obey, can you defy that? Does that make you a different person, because that's what "sinner" as an epithet is, that's what eternal damnation means? Kicker is, if angels were originally created as trusting, god has already made them defy their programming: can you take an innocent person and make them participate in evil? What does it take to corrupt someone, so that they actually think their actions are still just? And then of course, can you do it again in the other direction?

First came the corruption, the quite literal original sin, of putting obedience over morality and labeling that a "higher calling", the "greater good". Then comes the ironic redemption: can you defy your obedience programming and learn to trust yourself over others? Trust in who you are and what you believe?

Which is all to say: yeah, the fly led him to Aziraphale, because the fly IS Gabriel. Jim followed the fly because he's a factory reset angel at that point, built to trust and obey, aka blindly follow orders. An actual "innocent baby".

Then there's another question: if you split someone in two--like Gabriel into Jim and the fly--what happens when you reintegrate them? Is that person redeemed as innocent, or is the innocent damned because they're no longer "pure"? Purity vs corruption: can you ever actually redeem yourself? If not, what's the point of even trying? Would you even want to? What makes you try in the first place, and why would you want to?

if the fly was outside the box when aziraphale went to pick it up. and the fly is his "him". do you think the fly lead him to aziraphale? from where ever he was before?

[archangelween]

@kimberleyjean

I've always thought that seeing the fly enter the box was meant to signal to us that Gabriel was not carrying the fly in the box, therefore the box may have contained something else. Did the something else get absorbed by the fly (which is a container)?

It does imply that the box was not carrying the fly. I don't think he loses his memory until after a time in the elevator--eyes appear to still be purple on the CC. The CC shows him struggling to turn the box over to write on the bottom, then the next shows it as if it's light, then we see him at the elevator where he takes the matchbox out of it and it's still heavy through the end of the CC.

The way Jim carries the box on the street makes it appear to be empty? He's not straining and he's only using his fingertips to hold on. This is different from how he treats it in heaven, it's clearly much heavier there, except that one scene of him walking with his back to the cc.

if the fly was outside the box when aziraphale went to pick it up. and the fly is his "him". do you think the fly lead him to aziraphale? from where ever he was before?

[archangelween]

what crowley said to eve.

[archangelween]

i just realized. biblically, god punishes the snake for tempting eve by declaring it will crawl on its belly for eternity.

but right after, as we see adam and eve ejected from the garden, there's crowley standing in human form next to aziraphale.

adam and eve were punished.

crowley was not.

everything is meant? temptation is the right thing. it's not a sin to be a demon. god is just playing games. whether you are divinely "puinshed" or not, it's just god playing games. it's not a moral judgement, it's just....funny. ineffable, but in a damning light.

and that means the bible, in go, is explicitly wrong. god lied in the bible.

would you walk normally if you found out people believed you weren't supposed to be walking at all? would you flaunt it by sauntering around?

moving as a snake is also "sauntering vaguely". and turning into a snake requires going "downward" from upright walking.