#but i make good smart decisions

[ghouljams]

I just want Gaz. Any Gaz. I don’t care about the AU. He’s just so pretty and could fix me

Also König and Ghost are two flavors of crazy I just don’t wanna try in real life.

How about some medieval!Gaz?

Gaz who follows you down dimly lit corridors, places only the servants know about, and presses you against the stone wall with a hand over your mouth. He shushes you when you make a flinch and shove at him, and when your eyes widen in recognition he lets you go. His fingers linger against your jaw though, and you tell him he has an awful way of greeting people, which he hardly listens to. His eyes are so much deeper, darker, in the low light. They catch the flicker of the candles and trap their heat. That must be why his gaze makes you feel hot.

"I didn't see you last night," he tells you. You make a face. "After the kitchen," he says it like it's painful, like you're the dumb one for not knowing what he's talking about.

"I had to help cleaning up, I left the tonic in your room." You remind him. He looks away from you with a shake of his head, and knocks his fist against the wall over your shoulder. His fingers tighten on your jaw, holding you from following the movement. Your eyes dart to the end of the passage. He must see something with how tight his jaw is clenched.

"Do you-" he starts, exasperation clear before he stops again.

"Do I...?" You raise your brows at him, trying to coax out his point. Your leading tone seems to draw his attention back, his eyes heavier on you. Heavy enough to male your breath stop short.

"Do you have any idea what you do to me?" He asks, growls, the sound dripping molten between your legs. His thumb presses against your lips, as he takes a step closer. "God, if you did you wouldn' look at me like that."

You grip his bicep, unsure if you want to push his hand away or pull him closer. All you do know is his eyes hold you fast in place. Gaz crowds you closer against the wall. You've been here before, not with Gaz but others. People closer to your social standing, people with less to lose than the king's favorite advisor. You should resist pressing closer, staring back at him and wondering if he didn't grab you for some other reason. If you aren't his favorite for some other reason.

He's solid. Finely dressed and hiding his strength. You can feel it even through the fancy clothes, the raw strength of him, the heat. You press closer, aching to feel more. His biceps flexes under your hand, his fingers dragging from your face to rest against your neck. Just so gently scraping the underside of your jaw as you tip your head to keep eye contact. Gaz leans close, hardly moving a muscle but to bow his head for you.

"You can't press against me like that doll, and not expect a reaction," he breathes, his lips just ghosting over yours. Your eyes flutter closed, feeling the way he tilts his head, the brush of his nose against yours. You can almost feel the short hairs of his stubble starting to tickle your skin, when a voice calls down the passage and Gaz pulls away from you.

All the air in the tunnel rushes back at you and goosebumps break over your skin. You smack a hand over you lips, and take a few short steps away from Gaz. You shouldn't be here, not with him, not like this. Not when you know better.

"No, doll, wait," he tries, reaching for your hand. You pull it close against your chest.

"I'm not your toy," you tell him quickly, backstepping towards the other side, "and I have work to do," You finish before taking off in a sprint away from him.

Gaz drags a hand down his face watching you leave. You are pretty when you go. Too bad you're making such a habit out of it. What is he going to have to do to make you stay? Marry you?

He was hoping to court you first, but if you want a guarantee he's happy to provide it. He just has to talk to your family. He's sure they'll be thrilled.

[sunderwight]

I keep seeing people argue that Aziraphale is "intelligent" or "not a fool" and that this means he can't possibly have fallen for the Metatron's blatant manipulation tactics or still genuinely believe in Heaven's righteousness.

Setting aside the validity of various theories (most of which I at least find interesting, if not outright compelling!) I think there's an issue here, which is that intelligence doesn't protect you from cult-like thinking. Especially not when you've been more or less born and raised in the environment.

In fact, what intelligence tends to do to people who have been indoctrinated into cults (and a cult is exactly what GO Heaven operates like) is give you even more tools for justifying or thinking your way around the contradictions of the cults actions vs message.

We even see Aziraphale do this, several times!

In fact, at the end of S1 doing this is part of what helps save the day. When he points out that Heaven can't know that they aren't defying God's ineffable plan while trying to follow the Great Plan, he's not just talking them into standing down, he's giving them an out. Because the whole Armageddon thing has already gone to shit and cannot proceed without Adam's cooperation, what they're really dealing with at that point is getting Heaven and Hell to accept that without retaliating. Even when Satan shows up it's because he's pissed, not because doomsday is still on.

Aziraphale uses the cult's own logic to give Heaven (and Hell) a plausible reason to back down without completely losing face. They don't have to admit that they were wrong, they can just file everything under "ineffability". Aziraphale pulls this off so well in part because he's been doing this to himself for millennia.

When he doesn't understand or really approve of the Flood, he files it under "ineffability". God has a plan but it's too complex and beyond even angelic comprehension to understand, so there must be a good reason for the Flood, it's just that Aziraphale can't see it. When he sees Heaven being complicit in Job's suffering and the potential murder of his children, he reconciles it by deciding that what God really wants is for him and Bildad to secretly stop it. But he flounders on that later, because to some extent I think he knows that this reasoning is self-serving.

(Knowing it's self-serving doesn't refute it, though, it just means that he worries about that until he talks himself into a bunch of reasons why it's still probably true.)

In S1, when Crowley broaches the subject of the apocalypse, Aziraphale's initial response is to recite the propaganda. It's all going to go according to plan, and it will all be great! When that doesn't work (because of course it won't be great, he's going to end up losing his true home and the person he loves most if this all goes down no matter who wins), he lets Crowley help talk him into how he could thwart the plan without "really" betraying his concept of God.

Basically, if Aziraphale's values come into conflict with Heaven, he decides that God secretly agrees with him. It's very like people who find their values coming into conflict with the institution of their church or temple, and so decide that there's nothing wrong with their actual religion, it's all just normal human corruption (or in GO's case, angelic corruption) muddying the waters of an otherwise purely good thing.

Now in real life of course this gets to be a thorny issue, but keeping it simple there isn't really a total separation between a faith and its institutions. You can't claim that there's nothing in the religion that lends itself to bad takes, just like you also can't claim that any ideology or belief system is invulnerable to corruption. Likewise, even if every bad thing in GO were to turn out to be the fault of Heaven and Hell and not God, God would still be accountable for a lot of the situation because God still set the stage.

But what matters for Good Omens and Aziraphale and this post is that, Aziraphale has put considerable mental energy into justifying how God and Heaven can still be Good and Right even as both of them do things he finds intolerable. Whether it's "God secretly wants me to do what I think is right instead of what I'm being told" or "Heaven has earnestly misinterpreted the will of God due to not knowing as much as I do", he puts his intelligence to use in protecting himself from the kind of revelation that would uproot his worldview.

The only kind of knowledge that actually protects people from cults is the knowledge of how they operate, and awareness that you're dealing with a cult. Aziraphale has a terrible disadvantage on both fronts because even though he's spent years watching humanity get into hot water with this stuff, he does so with the firm perspective that things are different for angels. He can't necessarily apply what works for humans to himself, because he knows he's a different kind of being (and unlike with IRL cults, it's actually true in his case, though I think demons and angels are both less different from humans than they believe).

Though, interestingly, he's closer to a accepting the truth when it comes to the differences between angels and demons. In S1 he is fully confident that he could possess someone, because even though angels don't do that, demons can. Whether he admits it or not, Aziraphale really does believe that Crowley is not meaningfully different from himself in terms of personhood or ability. If he can make the leap to the idea that angels and demons are not exempt from human-oriented concepts of self-determination and free will and unfair treatment by authority, and reconcile it with his own intense distress at challenging a core belief, then the fact that he's quick on the uptake will really start to work in his favor.

[spacedlexi]

people dont talk enough about how heartbreaking the marlon betrayal mustve been for clem too,,

this dude saves the life of her and her kid. takes them in has them patched up gives them their first hot meal in who knows how long. gives them a safe place to stay. possibly permanently. confides in her that hes trying to be a good leader but feels like and fears that hes failing. asks her to help him take care of the rest of the group. helps her get over her fear of dogs by asking her to trust him. and things go well. she feels safe. like this place could really finally be the home shes been looking for

but as soon as she finds out what happened to the twins. that marlon planned on giving up her and aj too. she immediately becomes a liability to him and he attempts to kill her for it. locks her in the basement to die by walker. then tries to turn the group against her so he can shoot her instead when the first method fails. and he nearly succeeds

then a majority of the group turn against clem the minute aj kills marlon. ignoring marlons mistakes but condemning aj for his. like clem wasnt betrayed by marlon in the exact same way he betrayed the twins. like she literally wasnt almost killed twice? and how long had he been considering giving her up? was it always some contingency he planned? did he truly want to keep them around and things only changed when he feared the raiders had returned? she'll never know

[brionnne]

note that i will only ever call mithrun "stupid" jokingly. by "stupid", i only mean "frustrating behavior that i am immensely familar with". seeing him do something that makes me groan aloud, closing my eyes, sighing "stupid (affectionate, mournful)". like when he fucking... his dumbass "i don't want to [use the bathroom] right now, so it's fine." oughh. i know you! i know you! that's not how that works!!! and he's smart!!! he's so smart... but god, god... he's kind of an absent professor. he's kind of a cloudcuckoolander. i love him dearly. he gets called a dummy, a little idiot, and i flick his forehead, a little bonk of hard-heads, like "try again, idiot. that's not how bodies work." and "ooh, 'that's not going to work'. yes it is. shut up, stoopid. stubborn little man, my god." rolling my eyes forever.

[navree]

the one thing i always hate about that line about daemon whinging on at viserys for not making him the hand is that the hand of the king is a political position that requires political skill in order to function well and get the job done and daemon has spent the entire series showing us that he has the political instincts of a lobotomized tuna fish

[astriiformes]

Had a really good conversation with my therapist yesterday that has left me feeling better about life & the future than I have in... months, honestly (which also has me feeling really good about her ability to help me continue sorting through things).

I was talking about my distress about the future and in particular what I'm going to do when I graduate, since grad school isn't the most stable option, and she pointed out that since I was spiraling over hypotheticals, maybe it made sense to simply make up my mind about the first step, since applying to grad school is hardly the same as committing to grad school. And she was so right. I am so good at feeling like I need to make the right, perfect decision -- especially after making mistakes with school in the past -- that I have been worrying myself into depressive spirals over what the "right" decision is here. But making up my mind to at least apply and find out what my options are is a decision, that will give me a lot more information in the long run than paralysis over if it's "okay" to apply at all.

It'll still take a lot of work, obviously, and l don't know if I'll even get in anywhere, much less actually commit to doing a PhD if I do. But it has taken such an incredible weight off my shoulders just to say "Okay, I am going to apply, what next?" Because it means I can put all that nervous energy to actual use! Instead of spiraling the next time I start thinking about my options in the future, I can go do research on different PhD programs (without feeling guilty the whole time, like I have been until now)! I can ask my favorite professors for advice! I can reach out to current grad students to ask what they think of their advisors! All of which is actually productive and will help me make the most informed choice I can if and when the time comes, instead of ruminating endlessly on what the "best" one is!

TL;DR -- my therapist is very smart and understands me and the things my brain gets stuck on in a big way, and her advice has dislodged literal months of extremely disordered thinking just like that. Because now I feel like I've made a choice and have something to work towards. And also like I can breathe.

[quirinah]

oomf was talking about this combi and I remembered the season 25 episode where they interact for like 30 seconds. and then i got progressively more invested

[cutiekelley]

OKAY LISTEN. tbh I have not kept up with LU for a while so I am not quite sure what all you cool kids have been up to lately, nor do I know what the general consensus for how totk in this au works, but I NEED someone to make something about all the new recipes Wild has 🙏🙏

I mean, c'mon!! The boys with pizza?? Cheesecake?? Deep fried chicken??? Noble Pursuit?? Don't tell me they don't wanna take advantage of that one! plssss it would be so great!!

[ilynpilled]

what i find so funny about that ben shapiro clip is that there is a specific type of dudebro exactly like that that permeates this fandom. like their entire world view does not make a lick of sense as apparent by their takes on this series. they applaud the quality of being willing to use “necessary violence” in tywin & etc, and they seem to only understand the nuances of the use of necessary force when it is used for things it shouldn’t be used for (like sustaining a corrupt regime). they throw fits about dany navigating a situation where radical change is required in order to dismantle a system of slavery that perpetuates endless violence, and write a million thinkpieces about it and how it shows her madness or incompetence, but then they turn around and applaud this psuedo utilitarianism that they project onto other characters that are playing the game (especially ones with atrocious motives) because they want to live out some sort of hard and seasoned male leader competence fantasy. it is so fucking funny like:

use of “needed” force for subjugation = good

use of needed force for emancipation = bad

they would rather applaud a ruler that builds on violent subjugation than abolition & radical change. one is considered a clever and competent utilitarian, while the other too brutal, too far gone, and too idealistic

[glitch-the-rat-daily]

2) baking ft. sticks

ignore how glitch doesnt have its tail i forgot

[ayashiki-i-i]

I will stop soon I swear.

Some reunion angst I guess? And why is Ed naked you ask? No idea. No thoughts. Just Hugs and The Robe.

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

oughh......

[graphite-pencil]

Pookie bear is coming home

That and the other $90 worth of merch I just bought

[applecherry108]

Guess I’m starting a tag bc I cannot be stopped.

The AGONY of the faint leitmotif of “leaves on the vine” while iroh talks about how he owes Zuko 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[boimgfrog]

what's fun is we were walking around Walmart trying to figure out like what kind if oil to get and what filter and stuff and he was like "okay what color bottle is the oil you usually get?" trying to get on my level yknow and I was like :) ummmmmmm :) bottle? I just pour in whatever my grandma hands me ^-^ I think he almost killed me in that automotive aisle

[dykemd]

no cause every baby gay on the younger side needs to assimilate that post like do not get engaged in ur teens n do no get married in ur early 20s bro just WAIT like aint nobody saying dont get serious!! be as committed as u can be but dont rush into things yk live w them, grow w them, really be sure of that person thru time n joint experiences n then make that decision it will literally cost u nothing