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Fearful Memories (Aziraphale KNOWS)

[Moments that Matter]

"Silly Aziraphale. Clueless Aziraphale.

So easily taken in. So devoted to Heaven he can't see how awful it really is.

Guess that's why he left Crowley..."

?????????

Look at this moment. If you believe that Aziraphale has dreamy thoughts of heaven, and is idealistic about how "right and good" it is, look very closely.

That's not just a startle response. It's exaggerated, extreme, terrified. Aziraphale's eyes become unfocused for a moment. He's literally swaying, disoriented and off-balance. When he refocuses, he's not reassured that it's "just Jim". Aziraphale isn't seeing "just Jim". He's seeing a threat to his life, to his existance. That's PTSD, folks.

That's trauma.

Aziraphale was deep in thought about heaven at the time of the God/Satan Job bet, 2500 BC. He was remembering how Gabriel and Michael couldn't begin to comprehend the love that Job and Sitis had for their children, that they wouldn't want them destroyed and replaced. Aziraphale had futilely tried to advocate and explain, about human parental love, and and also that 7 more births wouldn't be a positive thing for Sitis. During the interaction, our Angel was scoffed at, disbelieved, patronized, mocked, minimized, and accused of not trusting God's plans. It was controlling, debasing, and altogether toxic.

Interestingly, their casual violence of destroying and replacing Job's children was subtle. The archangels don't see themselves as violent. They're RIGHTEOUS. They're "the Good Guys." Destroy Job's livelihood and his family? God's will. Battle your fellow angels and cast them plunging down into pools of burning sulfur and darkness? That's Justice. Even those who weren't violent, and just challenged your authority by asking too many damn fool questions? ABSOLUTELY FINE. They deserve it.

Heaven carries a constant undertone of violence. The threat is everpresent. "We did it before -- we are capable of doing it again." And Aziraphale is constantly hypervigilant because of it.

Worst of all, some of them enjoy it...

Aziraphale doesn't forget. He copes. He masks. He gives performative compliance to survive. They watch. They listen. Aziraphale spouts off heavenly rhetoric to keep them at bay and to keep his beloved demon safe.

Crowley didn't forgive Gabriel for trying to destroy Aziraphale with hellfire. Why do we somehow assume that Azi will forgive heaven and the archangels, when it was Crowley they actually kidnapped and beat and cast into the fire? (I have serious questions about how Crowley came to be tied into that chair. When we see him examine his bonds, I suspect he just came back into consciousness.)

"Oh, but Crowley didn't tell him about it!"

It's very clear that he did, prior to the first episode of S2. Crowley states during their argument about Jim that this is the same heavenly boss that tried to cast Aziraphale into hellfire. It obviously wasn't news to Aziraphale -- he doesn't miss a beat. He's simply focused on protecting this lost helpless featherless bird that's also been victimized by heaven.

"Okay, but that stuff was all done by the archangels. Aziraphale still let himself get sweet-talked and flattered by the Metatron, because he still believes heaven and the Metatron are Good."

We know -- WE KNOW -- that Aziraphale will do anything to protect Crowley. We've seen it over and over.

And we also know -- we are clearly shown -- that the Metatron hates Crowley, and Aziraphale knows it. Our Angel sees the same look we see. He keeps walking, anxiously trying to lead the Metatron away from Crowley.

Remember, this is the same Metatron who broke the last remnants of Aziraphale's innocence in S1. The same Metatron who spoke so casually about how "a multi-nation nuclear exhange would be a nice start" to the War between Heaven and Hell. Who didn't give the slightest thought about all the lives on Earth.

Aziraphale remembers this too.

Aziraphale is not a fool. He's a survivor, and a Protector. He's the fecking ANGEL OF THE EASTERN GATE who risked damnation to give his Flaming Sword to protect a pregant couple from the wilderness, and LIED to the Supreme Archangel to save the lives of 3 children. He's the Principality who was willing to go up against a giant Hellhound unarmed, and held his restored Sword up against Satan himself, knowing full well it would be futile.

Aziraphale is not stupid. He's analytical, investigative. He makes connections, sees patterns. He studied and solved the mysteries of Agnes Nutter's prophesies, and he studied and researched and remembered to explore the mystery of what happened to Gabriel.

Aziraphale knows what heaven is like. Imagine the Courage it took to return there. He had a much bigger reason than being cajoled and flattered. He would never believe that he could rewrite heaven's rules and make it all better.

Aziraphale had a plan. A spontaneous plan, a crazy plan, a desperate plan? Absolutely.

But fooled by heaven? Silly you, if you were even thinking it.

*****

(Btw, I think Crowley was part of that desperate, chaotic plan, but that's all explained in my Chess Moves Theory set!)

*****

Thanks for being here, and for considering the eager and enthusiastic writings of a stalwart Aziraphale defender and a believer in the Ineffable Old Married Couple!

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New Messages and Take My Hand Update for May 25.

For those of you following these fics and watching them gather dust, I want you to know that I have finished writing both of them.

Take my Hand, the rock star au, is with betas. I just need to send the final chapters off, so this one should be getting semi-regular updates over the next few months.

I've just finished a continuity read of New Messages and I'm intending to put the next chapter up tonight. After that, the updates should be pretty speedy.

There's also a couple of one shots and another long fic that's a collab (also all written) that might appear, but I want to focus on getting these two fully posted before anything else long is started.

Thank you all for your patience.

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Could you maybe reblog this post if you think respecting trans peoples' names and identities is a basic right and not a political opinion?

No pressure. Just seeking some validation of my sentiment. Due to some. people

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Louder

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At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields

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Proper boundaries

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“Let me rage about “traditionalism revival” here. This is a dogwhistle.”

Classicism/traditionalism rise is important concept to listen for these days in all of the arts…

The fact that Fountain is pissing off trads over a 100 years later is so fucking funny

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Okay okay we all know Johnny cash did his cover of Hurt and we were all like “ok he owns that now” but I watched the music video he made and I’m like “oh he OWNS it owns it”

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Media is incapable of providing context.

Trump's first impeachment, abuse of power, is all but forgotten five years later.

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“We are living in a moment in which the system of legal, interpretive legitimacy has fatally broken down. It’s been in its death throes for a decade. Now it’s no longer operating at all. That throne is empty of anything that commands our allegiance or claims to legitimacy. If the Supreme Court decides in a few months that people born on American soil are not citizens it will have disastrous and immediate effects on many of our fellow citizens. It won’t mean that the plain and always understood meaning of the 14th Amendment changed. It will mean that the people who currently hold power have opted to rule outside the Constitution. If the court says the President can, in fact, dismantle Department after Department, which Congress created, because the President holds some kind of indivisible sovereign power cribbed from an inter-war German far-right ideologue, that won’t make it so. It will remind us that we are in this period of interregnum in which we are grappling with a renegade, corrupt court operating outside the constitutional order as well as a renegade and lawless president.”

— Toward a Theory of Civic Sede Vacantism - TPM – Talking Points Memo

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Call or write your Congressperson today to oppose the SAVE Act. It would require documents that many people don’t have every time you update your voter registration, would eliminate registering to vote online or by mail or in volunteer voter registration drives, and would severely reduce registration at places like the DMV/MVA. The whole point of this bill is to suppress voting from women and people of color, and to go back to the days when you had to travel to the courthouse and go through a time consuming legal process in order to register to vote.

You can find your Representative here:

Or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

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White MAGA is massively unqualified.

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What do you mean we had to listen to “crooked Hillary” and “her emails” for YEARS and now they are somehow okay with some businessman and his 20 yr old interns accessing our money, shutting down departments, and threatening our federal employees?!?

Republicans, you’re being played. They’re stealing our money and destroying our government under the guise of “waste.” This is a heist and you voted for it.