#Rogues of War

[afaimscorner]

The Flash 9x03

Just pointing out that Frost got mentoned quite a lot in this episode, while Caitlin on the other hand ... Well, I mean I guess it tracks for a show where Iris having vanished into nothingness was treated like her being on holidays, but it also sadly tells you a lot about the current status of that show.

And that Red Death might actually just be a somehow possessed version of Ryan Wilder instead of just an alternate version like we all thought does not make things better, quite the contrary. (Even though I still think the twist is that she is not really Ryan at all, but why have her disappear was well in that case? Is that some kind of commentary on the silliest point of the whole “Batwoman”-show, namely that everyone who is a Bat-Hero just disappears one day out of the blue? Nope, that would be giving the current Writer’s Room to much credit.)

[kitkatt0430]

Since I rambled about last weeks episode as I watched it, I'm gonna do that again with this week's episode. So spoilers for The Flash S09E03 - Rogues of War beneath the cut. I'm depending on Hartley Rathaway to make things interesting again, so let's find out if he pulls through for me.

Opens with Fiddler and Boomerang having fun with a break in. I do enjoy their banter. Murmur, though... so creepy. (Yeah, I did see spoilers first so I know who is in the creepy mask.)

Barry and Iris taking cooking lessons in France. I do love that. And does this mean Iris is no longer a lethal chef? Since it took them 40 times in Flashtime... probably not.

But Iris really does not seem thrilled when Barry mentions she'll be pregnant soon. So seems like Ep 1's reveal of Iris' dislike of knowing so much about how her future is meant to happen hasn't been entirely dealt with. I'm not thrilled with this arc tbh. Like... I want to be glad they're finally addressing Iris feeling like she doesn't really have any real agency in her own life. But the time to address that was passed seasons ago. So doing it now feels forced.

oh lovely the app crashed, lets reboot that and hope I can skip forward to the right point.

Khione continues to make me think of Layla from Sky High, what with her interest in nature. And whatever is up with her is more interesting than the ongoing Chester/Allegra stuff.

Ooooh they name dropped the Cosmic Treadmill. I do love the Cosmic Treadmill. And after exposition and flashbacks and more exposition... yay there's Hartley!!!

STAR Labs for safe keeping. *snicker* Iris do you even hear yourself?

Hartley with his grin as he convinces Barry that they should steal shit together is hilarious. Like, he has to be having so much fun with this. Especially since they need more Rogues to pull it off.

Is Khione the official blocker of Chester/Allegra? Please say yes.

I don't remember Jaco right now (am I spelling his name right???) so I'm gonna have to look him up later.

Hartley pissing off Blaine makes me smile. Especially since he dislikes Hartley so much after last episode that Blaine makes a point of saying he isn't taking orders from Hartley. Oh how terrible, Hartley forced you to do the right thing and then pointed out getting drunk won't help. (Like... to some degree, I do get that there may be another source of his resentment of Hartley. If Blaine knows the story about Roderick and how Hartley waited five years to get him back then he may resent Hartley for getting his boyfriend back while Hartley destroyed the one thing that might bring back Frost. Of course, the biggest difference is that Hartley never tried to sacrifice anyone else's life to save Roderick. And, well... Roderick was never actually dead. Paused the show to write this so let's get back to it now.)

Goldface being dramatic and I do love that about him. And it amuses me that his on again, off again with Amunet is off again. And Carver. *cackling with laughter here* "Book club will remain a safe space." Lies apparently. *snicker* Hartley has to be wondering what kind of supervillain Goldface even is at this point. Also judging Barry so hard for his criminal contacts.

Oh... Jaco was in the episode where Iris got to be the Flash. I vaguely remember him now.

The bickering Rogues and Hartley once again asserting he's the smartest person in the room. Oh my arrogant Pied Piper. I do enjoy seeing him be so confident in his brilliance. :D Goldface and Blaine not getting along just makes me like Goldface more. And I already enjoy his character so much this episode.

What even is the point of the Chester/Allegra scene shoehorned in here?

Anyway, more Rogues banter. And Hartley is such a little shit. He's having so much fun pushing people's buttons and of course the Rogues being assholes to each other turns into them united against Barry so that they'll finally work together... which I think was Hartley's plan from the moment he started pushing buttons. He is a chess master who played against Eobard Thawne, after all.

Iris worrying about putting her career on hold to be a mom is pretty understandable. And I think it'd help if maybe she realized that she'll have more than just Barry to lean on when it comes to making time for herself once Nora comes. Joe and Cecile may wind up moving away, but Team Flash will still be there. And theoretically they're a found family.

I'm proud of Chester, making the Wayne Enterprises connection.

Oh, now Khione is enabling the Chester/Allegra. Bad Khione. Stop that.

Barry apologizing to the Rogues is actually kinda sweet. As funny as Goldface figuring out that Barry's the Flash on the spot, it's so much funnier that Jaco is just like 'yeah they got the same Jitter's order, it's obvious'. Had to pause the episode again, that's just hilarious. I may not have remembered Jaco before, but he is certainly memorable now. Barry, Barry, Barry... what is even the point of pretending to have a secret identity at this point?

So I'm kinda expecting Blaine to have betrayed them based on the listening device that showed up earlier. But it is fun to see all four Rogues working together with Barry.

Oh there's the betrayal. Mark Blaine. Asshole. I hate his stupid jacket. It looks terrible.

I do like that Hartley's first instinct is to tell Barry he's on the way to help. Of course, there are three more bad guy Rogues to stop Barry's Rogues from helping him.

De-powered Barry vs Blaine was definitely not gonna go Barry's way, but the Rogues vs Rogues was fun to watch. And Hartley canonically knows ASL!!!!!! Yes!

Jaco and Fiddler stopping mid fight to flirt. I adore them. That was unexpected and so cute.

Goldface naming the Red Death from Edgar Allen Poe. :D

Ooooh, likes like Hartley isn't the only Rogue sticking around. Goldface and Jaco will be helping out more this season too. Doesn't seem like they'll be in the next episode though, but I guess I'll know for sure when I check out the trailer for episode four.

Ryan has been missing for how long? And Team Flash is only finding out now? Why are these super hero teams so bad at reaching out to each other for help?

Fiddler is my fav bad Rogue now. Between flirting with Jaco and calling Blaine 'abs' mockingly, she's fun. And Blaine finding out that maybe he's in over his head now is exactly what he deserves.

Now for post episode thoughts.

Khione still doesn't seem to have a purpose. If she's supposed to be the right hero at the right time, then it may be a slog to get there. But right now, Caitlin would be a much more useful character than Khione is. So while Khione is sweet, that's all she seems to have going for her at the moment.

Chester/Allegra feel even more like a romantic plot tumor when there's Fiddler/Jaco's instant chemistry there to compare it to. Or last week's flirting with Hartley/Roderick.

Murmur trying to recruit Hartley was unexpected, but interesting in what it says about the respect Hartley must have commanded before he retired to run the club with Roderick. Especially since Goldface recognized Hartley once he identified himself as the Pied Piper. I'm not sure what to do with that yet, but it'll wind up expanded on in fanfic form eventually. I do like it's continuation on the last episode's themes about change, though. Hartley, when offered the chance to join the bad guys, turns the opportunity down because that's not who he chooses to be anymore. Compared to Blaine who presumably sought out Red Death's side because he cares more about his grief than what Frost would actually want. Much as I don't like Blaine, the narrative foil set up between him and Hartley is actually kinda interesting.

However. Does not look like we're getting more Hartley next week based on the trailer for episode 4, but maybe we'll learn how Ryan became the Red Death and if she's even our universe's Ryan? It'd be interesting if this is how the multiverse were to be reintroduced to the show. Probably not, but it's a thought.

Since ep3 was a more lighthearted episode, I'm expecting ep4 and ep5 (since they seem to be a two parter based on the naming) to be much darker. Which the teaser trailer seems to back up.

Despite the lack of Hartley, I think I'll tune in anyway next week. I mean, he might show up? And even if he doesn't, I don't want to miss out on important plot points for later. For now anyway. This season does seem better than what I saw of S8, but honestly it's a low bar to clear and my faith in the show runners/writers is pretty much gone.

(I'm still rooting for anyone to stab Mark Blaine in a dark alleyway. Because I'm afraid they're gonna give him yet another redemption arc. Undeservedly. Though it'd be great if he did not get a redemption arc and then Hartley gets to curbstomp him.)

[chromaherder]

Been thinking about them lately.

[amikoroyaiart]

Jyn and Cassian 🥰

[galoogamelady]

Since y'all call any Dragonborn character "Dark Urge" now

[jeronandor]

"So essentially what Star Wars to me was, a boy who is stuck at home and dreams of joining a war. And so it's like, let's tell a story of a girl who is stuck in a war and dreams of going home. It was like a mirror." - Gareth Edwards, 2023

[starwarsfilms]

#they invented romance and being married

[ohmovie]

Trust goes both ways.

JYN ERSO & CASSIAN ANDOR ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY│2016

[andorology]

obi-wan kenobi 🤝 jyn erso

"because it's me lol"

[mangomakoshark]

I'm trying to prove a point

If you have 2 favorites, pick one and say in the tags

Even if you're not much of a Star Wars fan, please answer and please reblog to increase the sample size

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[shutupcrime]

Some of you are too afraid to admit this but we all know Star Wars works best when it goes full soap opera

[secretly-a-trekkie]

these guys fascinate me

[kingoffantasy516]

Ok you know what, let's spread some positivity. Reblog this if you actually like Star Wars

And I am refering to all of star wars and not just select parts of it. Even if you have issues with parts of it, you still enjoy it.

[amikoroyaiart]

Rebelcaptain 🥰

[jynpoe]

Diego Luna as Cassian Andor Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)