#i am an aziraphale apologist

[songbird-is-crying]

Good Omens 2 may have wrecked my heart and soul and I may not recover until season 3 is released but believe me when I tell you it DELIVERED. I am a sucker for a good confrontation in a love story, and but I (personally) so rarely find them. It is a miscommunication trope, but it’s just a lack of understanding and innate differences in character that are keeping them apart!! rather than someone overhearing something and getting the wrong idea (looking at you, Shrek and the Fiona Sunflower scene). But when it is derived from programmed ideals and nurtured habits and beliefs it is so interesting when they conflict, i mean…

Do y’all understand how narratively SATISFYING it will be when aziraphale and crowley come together in the end and learn how to be with each other?? Just be?? The catharsis we will all experience because these two motherfuckers will have gone through the abyss or the bottomless pit or whatever the rock bottom stage is called in the hero’s journey only to come out of it?? And still choose to love each other?? Do you know how strong their love has got to be to pull that off??

Because this show is all about how love wins. LOVE WINS!! Not in some low effort, poor design quality slogan to grab your attention as well as your wallet in a target pride merch section, but in a real sense that love conquers all. Ok, that is still cheesy, but it really does!! The lengths that people go for each other because they love, it can’t be beat!! Like, the fact that Crowley’s and Aziraphale’s Miracle Magic Time is strongest when they work together because they are in LOOVVEEE. Good Omens is not about choosing a side and fighting to the death for loyalty’s sake, it’s about loving someone to the extreme that you will go to any lengths for them, fight to protect them, care for them, want to make the world better for them!! That is a force that cannot be beaten because love refuses to bow to anything!!Because love is bloodthirsty and raw and domestic and charming, and the breakup basically guarantees that we WILL see this force in action because we already KNOW their love is strong and deep enough to withstand this…

GIRL…

When these two come together in the end, I will fall to my knees in worship and make a god out of Neil Gaiman Himself because they will have earned it, because they will have come to a better understanding of themselves and be prepared to love without hesitation and without barriers. And it will be so beautiful.

Can you honestly sacrifice this future just for the instant gratification of them getting together at the end of season 2?? Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you prefer them living in unresolved, nonverbal ignorance because you’re too afraid of making them face their fears of being alone and being without purpose first??

Season 1 made me realize my personal philosophy on the nature of humanity and choice and sides, but now I really see that it’s about choosing to be on the side of what you love, and how that loyalty is the only true thing and the universe.

(But before you think “well, Crowley was ready to give up everything and love Aziraphale, but Aziraphale chose not to be on his side and love him” you forget that Aziraphale wants to fix the system to be fair to people like Crowley because he loves him and believes him to be the most “good” out of anyone he’s met, even himself! He loves him so much he wants to fix the world for him, and he did what he thought was right by not wavering and committing to his mission, even if that meant losing him!!)

God, I love this show so much. The book, the radio, my precious vinyl records of the soundtrack (love you David Arnold, muah), and even the graphic novel I will never see for at least a year, it’s just all so incredibly important to me. Good Omens has helped me realize what I truly believe in and has really influenced my outlook on life. And wow that is cheesy, but it’s ok that this show makes me insane, how it makes me ramble on tumblr at midnight because of the appreciation it has given me for the world around me, because I feel so much love doing so.

I wish I could express everything this show has made me feel. But my feelings are simply ineffable.

I LOVE LOVE!! I LOVE LIFE!! I LOVE EVERYTHING!! THE WORLD IS GOOD AND KIND BECAUSE WE HAVE PEOPLE AND THINGS AND PASSIONS TO CARE ABOUT!!!

[queer-reader-07]

i get that a lot of people are mad at aziraphale for leaving. i get it i really do and if you feel that way your feelings are so valid. /gen

but me personally? i’m not mad at azi. i understand why he did what he did, i understand why he left. we all know that azi believes in heaven a little too much, he knows they do bad things (e.g. sanction the killing of job’s kids) but he still believes that they’re overall good, that god’s plan is inherently good. and maybe the people in charge have just not understood how to run heaven properly and if he can be in charge, he can make it good for real this time.

he wants to make heaven better, he wants crowley to be welcome in heaven because azi believes crowley is good. he believes that crowley never should’ve fallen in the first place. he wants to see crowley light up with joy like he did when he made the pillars of creations (side bar: having him make the pillars of creation was SUCH a good choice). azi loves crowley so fucking much that i have a hard time believing his choice to say yes to the metatron was selfish. azi wants to rebuild heaven because he just wants to be happy with crowley without interference from anyone. and if he’s in charge then he can make sure nobody bothers crowley.

and yeah, i do think him leaving was a choice. i hate the coffee theory. what azi did was completely in character, that doesn’t mean you have to like his choice but you can’t say it doesn’t make sense. everything that has led up to this has shown us that azi believes that heaven is the “good side” and therefore he believes he can do good by standing by heaven.

and look, i don’t think azi being supreme archangel is gonna go over well. i absolutely expect this to blow up in azi’s face because the metatron is a manipulative piece of trash. but i know that azi is damn well gonna try to make it work because he believes in heaven (for now at least)

[phantomram-b00]

So my mom finally finished, now she understand the pain like the rest of us but she called Aziraphale an asshole noooo

(Also she finally realize they love each other, but not until Uriel called Crowley his boyfriend meaning she finally got it until episode five. So yay! She hate that there only 6 episode. But she overall love it)

[emmtm]

Im sorry but I really hate the coffee theory.

It takes away all of aziraphale’s depth as a character. Part of the humanity of his character is being able to make mistakes and have flaws. Religious trauma is legit, aziraphale is a strong believer in heaven always being right-which obviously isnt true- he just hasn’t noticed this because he feels things so deeply, but is honestly still a bit naive. He doesnt have the same worldview as crowley who has lived through both heaven and hell firsthand. Aziraphale only knows heaven and the picture that heaven paints of hell. The coffee theory is essentially saying that aziraphale cannot do wrong which is like, kind of the opposite of the entire point. There is a lot more depth in his decision than i think a lot of people are seeing. He didn’t just leave crowley to go to heaven. He went back to heaven because he had an opportunity to change the system and make it better, which is very simular to what Crowley wanted to do when he was an angel-which eventually led to his fall. But aziraphale knows that with the status of supreme archangel, he can actually make those changes. He’s not doing it for himself, he’s taking himself away from everything he loves ffs. He loves the world, and he is doing what he thinks is best to make it better. The coffee theory plays it out as aziraphale is being forced to go to heaven by the metatron which I personally just don’t think is true. I think it was a very difficult decision, and i don’t think aziraphale knew how much it would hurt crowley. Basically, aziraphale made a very difficult decision and ended up hurting crowley. The flaws in his thinking and the mistakes he has made are all so crucial to his character. He is not perfect, the coffee theory is trying to paint it as if he is. He is, after all, just enough of a bastard to be worth liking. Stop taking away the bastard part.

[emily84]

you think i missed it when aziraphale answers back, no filter, just comes out naturally, 'but you're the bad guys', not 'they' but 'you', like, all matter-of-fact no thought behind it, but i will still be thinking about it when the rapture comes (which it won't cos i'm a non-believer anyway). he is still not seeing crowley as fully realized individual person-entity but as an attachment of the 'side' he's supposed to be on etc. he is just so deeply entrenched in that mentality he'll never be free of it (i know he'll be free of it by the end of s3 gddammit cos that's the whole point but still)

[thetinytreesleft]

what if aziraphale is just a little baby and needs a hug

[estravenlover]

finished good omens season two by screaming KILL YOURSELF at aziraphale until the credits ended

[neil-gaiman]

Hello Mr. Gaiman,

I was wondering (If you can even reveal this), was your intention to make Aziraphale unlikable for his reaction to Crowleys kiss? In my opinion I don’t think either was wrong or right for what went down in the last few minutes of the last episode, and that there was simply a lot of miscommunication which blew up between the two of them. The reason I’m desperate to know your intentions is because I’ve had more than one person on a dating app stop talking to me because I said I was an “Aziraphale apologist”, and I would like to confirm that I am not completely misunderstanding the purpose behind, what some are calling “their divorce”.

P.S. thank you for all of your amazing works, and being a big reason I regained my interest in reading <3

I think you need to change your dating app.

[celestialholz]

The Resurrectionist (or 'Crowley's dying briefly because character-building, and here's why')

I should start off by saying, friends, that I have written exactly zero books. (Bloody lot of fanfiction, but no actual novels). And I like coffee, but not particularly with oat milk. (The poison's metaphorical, not physical), but... well, you guys can keep both of 'em, because they're just not relevant to this conversation. I am also, as you may have already guessed, not Neil Gaiman. A chick can only speculate, but she does like to back it up with actual evidence.

No, I'm simply here to ask you a question.

What's the single worst thing Heaven could ever do to Aziraphale?

What would drive our angel so far from the clutches of Heaven that he would never, ever wish to return? What would set him unequivocally free from six millenia of assumed responsibility; what would make him realise that God can never change? What would strip everything away from him?

Because of course, this is what we have to do next series. This is Aziraphale's whole arc. If he doesn't try and change things and fail, he will always wonder. Always have a 'what if.' Will never be able to truly move on, will never be free from the eternal abuse cycle.

And so the severing has to be monumental, and everlasting. Then we get our happy ending. Storytelling, loves, done flawlessly. (Again, not a novelist... just a girl who's been writing for over half of her lifetime.)

And so, I ask again:

What's the single worst thing Heaven could ever do to Aziraphale?

And, well, it's a manifold question isn't it, with lots of potential ans - no I'm just kidding. Very simple question, very simple answer.

So congratulations to the very likely hundreds of you who have just said 'murder Crowley,' because a. you're very much correct and b. we've all just predicted the end of series three.

(... I mean, probably not the very end. But the emotional crux, definitely.)

And naturally, I'm not talking discorporation. I'm talking 'wiped from the universe altogether, leaving our angel eternally alone' kinda murder. The real shit. The good shit. Never mind any of this 'editing the Book of Life leading to an ineffable paradox' kinda bullshit - this is Heaven, the natural source point of holy water. One miracled Supersoaker and our demon's ancient history, friends.

Because y'see guys, severing Aziraphale's connection isn't the only problem we face in terms of narrative romance. We've also got Crowley, who has spent six millennia being in love with a guy who just takes, takes, takes... him for granted.

And this is NOT to say that Aziraphale gives him nothing back - he so very clearly does. (I am a consummate Aziraphale apologist, Crowley's just as much of a fool post-series two as our angel is, and Aziraphale needs this, as I've mentioned.) But... Crowley is his teacher. His moral guide. His protector. It mostly goes one way, and despite all of that and him being happy to be that guy for all this time... right when it matters most, Aziraphale (to Crowley, at least) has abandoned him. He's told him he isn't good enough.

(... Which is bollocks. That's not what Aziraphale's said at all, they're both as overprotective as each other and have a desperate, painful longing to keep one another safe in their own best way. But it sure fucking looks like it to CROWLEY, which is what matters.)

And so, we have two issues in achieving our happy-ever-after.

Sundering Aziraphale from Heaven forever;

Ensuring Crowley trusts him fully and knows completely that he is Aziraphale's only choice.

(And also by GOD do they need to have a proper conversation, but that one kinda goes without saying. It'll happen.) We have to even up this relationship; we have to make it absolute narrative equilibrium, and I am absolutely sure Neil knows this probably far better than I do.

... And so, how do we achieve both these things in one hit, whilst also telling a Second Coming story and holding a celestial war?

Well, we kill Crowley. Obviously. Not until episode five or six and after an emotional, romantic reunion of mutual understanding, but... we kill Crowley.

... And then Aziraphale brings him back. Yes, from complete death.

I would like at this juncture to remind you that miracles, apparently (and this is a thing we've just learned guys, almost like it's suddenly going to be relevant ongoing) are measured in Lazarii.

(Great thanks to the Aziraphale to my Crowley, @porgthespacepenguin, for these few screenshots I'm showing off here today. You'd never leave me, not even for my own good. <3)

Lazarii is very obviously named after Jesus' apparently greatest miracle, of raising Lazarus from the dead in the book of John. They managed to achieve twenty-five times the necessary amount of energy it takes to bring someone back from death... without actually fucking trying.

Let's take a look at the book of John a sec. Or more specifically, its eleventh chapter and twenty-fifth verse.

Jesus told her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The person who believes in me, even though he dies, will live."

My thanks to Neil once again for murdering me like Heaven's going to murder Crowley. Cold blood, point-blank.

'Who believes in me.' Huh. Only for the past six thousand years, Aziraphale dear...

Here's a little of what the internet has to say about the number 25 in numerology, by the way.

And may I also remind you at this stage that there is a pub in this series called The Resurrectionist, and only Aziraphale goes into it.

I mean sure, Crowley's booksitting and trying to make the ladies hilariously like him and Aziraphale fall in love in the same way he himself did, but the fact remains... one relevant pub name. One guy. (We all need a narrative excuse sometimes Neil, I get you.)

Considering all this, friends, let me ask you another question. This one's a little more wordy, that's on me.

What do you think would happen when a being capable of raising someone from the dead twelve and a half times over for the sake of his beloved's protection loses said beloved beyond all doubt?

... And this will be after he gains the ultimate celestial power-up, by the way. In case we'd forgotten that that alone is also about to boost Aziraphale to the fucking stratosphere, and finally put him on an equal footing with Crowley. (Who is clearly an ex-archangel, but not Lucifer, so Neil's since said.)

... And I think we know the answer, don't we? The kind of miracle that

(You can't see me, but I'm staring into the camera like I'm one of The Office main cast right now.)

This is the kind of power that fucks with reality - the kind of power that scares Heaven and Hell to absolute death, hence Metatron being in the DMs. And crucially, this miracle was boosted because of love. Because of a desire to keep the status quo, their 'own side'. You amplify both those conditions to the nth degree by destroying one of them? It's over, lads. Resurrection is the beginning.

Resurrection evens up a playing field. It destroys Aziraphale and renews him in one hit; it proves to Crowley once and for all that Aziraphale loves him exactly as he is.

... It's a no-brainer, pals.

And what do they do after this? Well, fuck up the celestial order, naturally. I have theories, the main one of them being that they're going to be God and Satan respectively and unite Heaven and Hell in eternal marriage, but... that's just a theory. A television theory.

The resurrection thing? Not so much.

... See, this is the thing, my friends. You don't need to have written a 16k essay to predict the future.

All you need is the ability to tell a story, an observant eye for that which is already present, and a simple question. (Followed by a mildly more complex one. It's a working allegory.)

... I'm just going to leave you with this one shot of Aziraphale picking up his own destiny. Because poetic cinema.

[deppiet]

About the yassification of GO2.

Warning: the following text is highly critical of the second season of Good Omens. If you enjoyed it, I am happy for you, and a non-negligible amount of jealous as well. Please scroll past before I inevitably rain on your fandom parade.

So, I did the thing. I binged the entire second season of what was, up to now, my favorite show ever, in one sitting. And I have a great deal of things to say, but hardly any of them is positive.

Let me start by saying that I don't mind the cliffhanger or the melancholy ending, like at all. In our era of Marvel apologists and the instant gratification culture, it is necessary for media to persevere and add nuance to romantic relationships. That said, what transpired during the six hours leading up to this sort of unearned climax hardly contains anything remotely close to nuance.

Who are these people? I don't mean the new characters, all of them written as cardboard-cut anthropomorphic personifications of stereotypes, yassified to the point of representation losing its purpose and getting in the way of, you know, actual writing. I mean the protagonists themselves, Aziraphale and Crowley, up to now my favorite characters in the entire world and -up to now- tangled in a love story so beautiful I had, for better or for worse, devoted a large part of my creative output on it, making art, songs, and metas on why what those two entities had was as close to perfect as anyone can hope to find for themselves.

These are not the characters I knew. The characters I knew spent hundreds of human lifetimes revolving around each other in a treacherous yet familiar dance- they both knew the love was there, it was comfortable like an armchair that has taken the shape of the body using it for years. They argued the way old couples do, and of course, like all fictional beings that are counterparts of one another, had differences to settle, but what stood in their way wasn't misunderstanding or miscommunication, in was their fear of Heaven and Hell, and their fundamentally different approaches on how to keep each other safe.

What is all this teen angst? This will-they-won't-they silliness that lacks any nuance, thematic coherence, or literally even trace amounts of understanding of the source material? Where is the dark humor, the quotability, the chaotic overarching plot, the self conscious camp? The season is so cynically written to cater specifically to a certain part of fandom, that I am losing respect for the original work- because if Neil Gaiman doesn't care for these fictional beings, and he evidently doesn't, why should I?

The thematic core of what made Good Omens what it was, had always been the "Love in unexpected places" trope Sir Terry Pratchett knew how to write so well. It had never been about the fantasy, because Sir Terry wrote satire wrapped up in a supernatural package, it had never been about the romance, because when the ship becomes the end instead of the means, the love rings hollow, like artificial light trying to pass as sunshine. The beating heart of GO lies in its philosophy, in the beautiful notion that the agents of two oppressive systems at war have more in common with one another than with their respective oppressors. That being a nobody, a mere cog in a larger machine, says more about said machine than it does about you, and that you can try to break free and build a life for yourself, where a happy ending looks like a dinner at the Ritz with the one you love most.

Shoehorning an underdeveloped "romance" between Beelzebub and Gabriel not only feels like bad fanfic (disclaimer: I like the ship and feel like it could have worked if developed in any capacity, and presented in a more humorous and character-appropriate way. I hate with passion how much they watered down Beelzebub in order to make them stereotypically romanceable, adding the Ineffable Bureaucracy to the ever-expanding list of characters I don't care about anymore.) but also, it muddles and grossly undermines the thematic raison d'être of Ineffable Husbands. If the ramifications for defecting and fucking off with the enemy were a slap on the wrist for the respective leaders of both sides, well surely the system can't be that oppressive after all. And if fear of the oppressive system wasn't, after all, what kept these beings apart, surely these two entities don't like each other as much as we thought. Or rather, one is reduced to a lovesick puppy and the other to a brainless husk of a character, a plot device, a means to go from place A to place B without spending much brainpower on the logistics.

And if these two new people got to kiss I care not, for they are not the same people I rooted for (props, though, to the actors, who gave, somehow, an almost Shakespearean gravitas to their love affair, underwritten and dumbed down as it was. They both love the characters, and it shows in the minuscule yet brilliant ways in which they added nuance where the script had none.)

What was that thing with the lesbians about? Though straight passing, I have always known myself to be attracted to women as well as men, and I am always highly suspicious when an "ally" writer (see: straight, no shade to straight people among which I live because they are, like, the majority) decides to make all characters queer, in the face of real-world statistics and despite NOT being queer themselves. When a person like Nate Stevenson does it they get a pass because writers self-insert and because, when done well, it can carry a message of equality. But when the ally writer does it, unless it is pitch-perfect, I am forced to examine the possibility of them being calculating about it and trying to score representation points, often because they need the rep as a fig leaf to cry homophobia behind when people start complaining about the atrocious plot.

Nina and Maggie were boring. They had no personalities, no cohesive backstories, nothing to make us understand what they are to one another and to the overarching plot ("plot" is used loosely here, for there was no plot: the series ended where it should have started, with six hours of -progressively more offensive to my intelligence- fanfic tropes in a trenchcoat serving as the, well, "plot"). I didn't care whether or not they'd end up together, because I have no idea who they are. The blandness of the dialogue had the actresses, both very talented as evidenced in the first season, grasping at straws with what little characterization they were left to work with, and the "ball" was so unbelievably bad a plot device no amount of suspension of disbelief was ever going to make it right.

The minisodes, though at parts clever and philosophical, felt out of place. This was another narrative choice I had to raise my eyebrows at, because it felt like a bunch of executives sat around a table and watched Neil Gaiman's powerpoint presentation of what made Season 1 financially successful. They were shoehorned in, largely irrelevant to the, eh, "plot", and most of them lasted far more than I personally deemed welcome, or necessary.

What else is there to say? The wink-winks and nudge-nudges to the Tumblr nation? The in-your-face Doctor Who reference? The narratively myopic choice to make Crowley a former archangel? The cheese dialogue, not one bit of which was quotable?

I am distraught. I am grieving an old friend, and a part of my fandom life I cannot, in good faith, return back to after this gross betrayal. I am happy for those who don't see it, because I wish I could love this season past its flaws. However, the writing isn't simply mediocre, it is irrevocably, immeasurably, undescribably bad, so bad I am shocked to my very core, so bad I find it offensive to Sir Terry's memory and everything his own creative output was lovingly filled with.

I am passing all five stages of grief and very much doubt I will return to this fandom. I loved the original story and the characters with all my heart- now the aforementioned heart is broken, not by the breakup or anything as pedestrian as cheap romantic tropes. But because my old friends, my family of fictional beings, are no longer the ones I loved and could relate to.

Deppie out.

[g0mens]

absolutely cannot understand the hate for aziraphale rn, i am nothing if not an aziraphale apologist. if aziraphale has a million fans i am one of them. if he has 1 fan, that one is me. if he has no fans, i am no longer alive. if the fandom is against aziraphale, i am against the fandom

[queer-reader-07]

ok time for me to be an aziraphale apologist / stan on main. because i am tired of how much shit he is getting.

1) i hate hate HATE the amount of people who keep insinuating that crowley is *more* in love with aziraphale than aziraphale is with crowley. did we watch the same show and read the same book??

did you not see aziraphale’s longing gazes that started *checks notes* literally before time? did you note watch as he got himself into precarious situations just so that he could be rescued by crowley and subsequently be asked out on a lunch date? did you not see aziraphale take any and every opportunity to simply touch crowley’s body? to just feel a little more closeness? he literally gave crowley holy water. if that isn’t love i don’t know what is.

yes, crowley shows his love for aziraphale very differently. for crowley it’s acts of service and that loving snark. but that doesn’t mean aziraphale doesn’t love crowley. they both love each other so so deeply and equally. they just love differently.

2) aziraphale is not a bad person for choosing to go to heaven.

i have talked about this in a few contexts before (eg how it makes sense from a religious trauma standpoint) but today i’m talking about it generally.

aziraphale did not choose heaven over crowley. he chose saving the world in the now, so crowley can be safe in the future. so that he and crowley might still have an earth to have a future on.

aziraphale still has faith that heaven can change for the better, and if it can be him doing the change why wouldn’t he want to take the opportunity? i don’t think you have to like his decision, but so many people are screaming “aziraphale bad!!!” and i just don’t get it.

the decision makes sense. it is so completely in character.

look. i understand being distraught or upset about the ending of season 2. i won’t pretend that i was happy about the ending. but i think a lot of people have forgotten how stories are structured. season 2 is the second act in a three act story. the final fifteen are the standard conflict that basically every three act story has.

but it was really shocking to see how many people went from loving aziraphale to just crapping on him because he made an in-character- understandable-in-the-context-of-his-past decision.

idk i just don’t think it makes sense or is fair to boil his decision down to “it’s out of character” or “he doesn’t love crowley as much” (don’t even get me STARTED on coffee theory) just because you didn’t agree with it.

aziraphale has flaws, but so does crowley. that’s what makes them such good and compelling characters. they aren’t black and white, bad and good. that’s the whole point of their characters and dynamic, they exist in the gray space.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Any thoughts on Nanami and Wakaba? (not as a pairing, unless you see it, then I'm very interested)

I've been watching Utena with friends and we had constant fights about those two, because "She literally kills kittens, what's wrong with you" for Nanami (I am witch apologist) and "Why is she even here" for Wakaba (I am girl enjoyer)

Pfft.

I don't see it as a pairing though in the world of Utena anything's possible.

But I certainly have thoughts on the characters as well as the world of Utena itself that's perhaps worth bearing in mind.

Utena as a Show

Utena is one of my favorite shows to have ever been created. However, it's something I also sometimes hesitate to recommend. It not only deals with extremely dark themes (albeit in a non-graphic manner) from murder, sexual assault, grooming, to rampant incest but also doesn't do so in a way that the modern internet can in any way handle.

What do I mean?

Every character has something seriously wrong with them and makes awful and sometimes outright malicious decisions.

Utena, our heroine, the prince, we learn later has forgotten the reason she wished to become a prince as an adolescent and at first pursues the goal simply out of a desire to be noble and embody this idea of chivalry and nobility without actually knowing what these things are. Miki is alright enough save that he has that thing going on with his twin sister and covets Anthy without ever truly wishing to know her.

That's not even getting to Anthy who I can only state is very complicated.

It's not a show that people can watch if they're not comfortable with the idea that there is something horribly wrong with everyone. The good characters aren't always good, the bad characters sometimes have reason to be bad (and sometimes are just pure evil), and you might not even know who the fuck the good and bad characters are because it turns out breaking the world's shell was probably a good thing.

Compared to say Good Omens which has the complexity of a thimble and people are still upset that Aziraphale made the wrong choice at the end of series 2 there.

But back to your question.

Nanami

I love all the characters in Utena, but Nanami might just be one of my favorites in that she's the beautifully executed dark horse of the series.

Because it turns out she's the only one who's fucking sane.

We start out and Nanami is presented as Anime Mean Girl. Oh, she's that type, the pretty rich girl who's going to bully our romantic lead. Okay, Nanami, I will suffer through you. But then almost immediately this goes awry when nothing every goes Nanami's way. She's crushed by elephants, stalked by an eleven year old, and she... really really really likes her big brother.

And as we go on we see her at first as someone who's truly a villain, she murders kittens as you note, and that is fucked up but then by the end we find out that despite all prior indications she is the only person who does not want to sleep with her brother and thinks this is a madhouse.

She's fascinating and I love her.

But more on the kitten--I think Nanami is excellently portrayed as a little girl who is severely fucked up (in part by Ohtori and in part by life itself). She has an unnatural devotion to her brother, which he also enables throughout the series, and... something weird is going on with the parents (in other versions, namely the movie, it's worth noting that Touga turns out to have been abused by his father).

I don't know if I'd condemn or laud her but she's the character who's at first presented as the worst but then it turns out everyone is just as bad/worse than Nanami is and actually she lives in a madhouse.

Wakaba

I mean.

"Why is she even here?" is the point of Wakaba's whole character arc, which I'd argue is very vital to the storyline of the anime. That's why she's great.

Wakaba's that girl who is normal, she's just normal, and she wants to be special without there being anything special about her. She's nice and kind, but only to a certain degree, and she wants to be like Utena and all these shining brilliant people in her life.

She serves as the catalyst of the plot, in Utena first engaging in a duel, and yet is never involved further in the events. She desperately wants Saionji, to be special herself, and we see her rejecting a very kind boy who genuinely cares for her because of this. We learn that she's not as nice as we, e.g. Utena, had previously thought and that Utena has this quality that Utena herself doesn't understand and that others envy without her realizing it.

Wakaba's descent is when Utena first begins to realize she's failed as a friend, despite all her attempts to do right by Wakaba, and that she doesn't understand those around her as she's trapped in her own world/idea of chivalry (a foreshadowing for what happens with Anthy).

Wakaba helps act as a foil for Utena and is vital to help slowly reveal why Utena struggles and has to grow as a person in order to free Anthy (and why Utena is betrayed by Anthy without ever seeing a hint of it coming).

[thealogie]

I am an Aziraphale apologist and yet I contain multitudes because I am also very sympathetic to Crowley in a situation where from Crowley’s point of view (I don’t think this is what Aziraphale meant but it’s what Crowley heard) it’s like he said to Aziraphale ‘I know that I am gay and you are too, now we’re both basically excommunicated from our Christian sect we can be together’ and Aziraphale said ‘yes we can be together… in this conversion therapy where we can learn to be straight best friends’

Well the thing is they are not equally wrong in that scenario like aziraphale is clearly more wrong. Like regardless of how good his intentions are and how he’s actually making a noble sacrifice, he very much does say “I forgive you” in response to gay kissing.

However that is what makes it more special to be an aziraphale girl. Crowley is the people’s princess, aziraphale belongs to me and my handpicked group of tumblrinas who want to squish him like a bug and put him under a microscope

[hey-must-be-a-devilbetween-us]

I am indeed an aziraphale apologist but "of course you said no to hell you're the bad guys" makes me compulsively yell "shut up !!" everytime.

like!! Shut all the way up !! Aa!!

[impishtubist]

GIVE ME THE GO2 DISCOURSE—What’s your favorite (or favorites, if there are multiple) fun theory coming out of this season?

I actually wasn't even aware that there was GO discourse at all until, like, yesterday. 😂

I don't know if I have any ~fun theories, but I certainly do have opinions!

All the book fans (and I am a book fan originally, lemme be clear) who are dragging the show and saying that Aziraphale and Crowley were OOC the entire time and who are claiming that their pre-show fics are better........well, it certainly IS a take! A wrong one, but a take nonetheless. Sorry, but Neil absolutely did his own characters justice. You're just mad they don't fit your personal fanon.

Aziraphale and Crowley were both wrong and both right! I'm a Crowley apologist through and through, but I also get where Aziraphale was coming from! I completely understand why he did what he did! It was completely consistent with his character, and so was Crowley's reaction.

I actually don't believe in any of the fun theories. Coffee theory, swap theory, etc. I think people are coming up with those theories to make themselves feel better, but I am not one of those people. I am reveling in the pain, which again, I feel is completely consistent with what we know of the characters. Everyone's actions made sense!

And just for funsies..............Crowley is 100% a top and I don't understand the prevalence of top Aziraphale in this fandom OKAY BYE