Sad And Thoughtful

People like Cedric because he's the most expressive, ironic, and sassy character of the show. He has a great *unconventional* design, he walks funny, he's weird, he bullies kids because he's tired of his job (who in the world can't relate to this) and he gives us funny scenes. He's just so done with life that there's a scene where Sofia asks what's wrong with her, and this mf starts to laugh like joker thinking about thousands of things to say to her, but he holds himself not to

He has a terrible sleep schedule, he's grumpy, he's frustrated with his work, his social life sucks, his posture? same thing. Absolutely no bitches, no friends, depressed, irritated, and still too silly to do anything too cruel, or he fails constantly. And he has a big repressed heart underneath all this, which makes us relate to him even more.

His voice actor is amazing, his songs are good, his backstory???? Perfect, he has good reasons of why he did what he did, and he wears purple. Chef's kiss.

People like him because he's relatable, funny and he stands out from the other characters. The other part of the fandom can't be mad just because the character who stands out the most is the most popular one. It's not my fault that I get just happy watching the usual episodes but laugh my ass of in the ones he's in. Blame the writers for making such a lovable and relatable character.

Yes, there are indeed some people in the fandom who react too much when his name is mentioned, like for example hating ANY character who goes against him somehow, but I guess that's how fandoms work. Our fandom is small (thank god), y'all would know what real suffering is when your favorite character has a huge fanbase who treats him like a baby who can't be harmed in any way. I swear to god the STF fandom is a lot healthier than other fandoms that I've met before. For me, everything here seems nice and under control. There's weird stuff here and there, but I've seen worse (I'm an og undertale fan)

They're the same picture.

Based on a scene from fordtato Jersey Boy fanfic.

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

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.

MTMM (Media that made me) Inktober Day 18

Gravity Falls

I came waaay late to this party but dammit, it’s better late than never. This show is awesome. The writing is sharp and hilarious. The animation is awesome. The storytelling is top notch. The villains it gave us…omg. BILL CIPHER is my FAVORITE villain in all of animation. It’s nuts. I can honestly say, this show is one of a kind.

Yes, I returned to the fandom with various sketches.

1. Disco Girl Ford.

2. Fiddleford with the cool moustache.

3. Bill is going through a breakup. It's not going so well for him.

A little while ago I saw online someone had made a DND character sheet for Ford Pines. In the ability scores area, they had intelligence as the highest (makes sense), and strength as one of the lowest (fair enough)

But then they had wisdom as second highest and dexterity as second lowest, and I gotta say, I think those two need to be flipped

I mean let’s start with dexterity. Now I’m not an expert on DND by any means so apologies if I am misunderstanding dexterity here, but others have pointed out that Ford spent his entire adulthood chasing after and/or running from paranormal creatures. I guess I just feel like he has to have high dexterity for him to have even survived all those years.

Also this

But wisdom being low is where I feel most strongly.

I wouldn’t be the first to point out that Ford, while highly intelligent, completely lacks common sense.

People have noted that the safety measures for turning the portal on and off should have been reverse, that the portal shouldn’t have been that easy to turn on by accident and yet it required at least two people to turn it off.

He keeps an infinity die in a “cheap plastic case”

He gives a 12 year old a cross bow

He gives another 12 year old a mind control tie and tells him to “use it responsibly”

He takes Dipper out on several missions that were probably too dangerous for him, refer to the magnet gun above, where Dipper, if he didn’t do it right, could have fallen to his death, and Ford also took him on the mission to shoot Bill for …some reason???? Leave the 12 year old at home when you go kill god to save the world from the current apocalypse! Why do I even need to say that??? Also “don’t worry I’ve been down here countless times and all the aliens are dead…probably”

As I recall, “Bill proofing the shack” was his first line of defense and “Bill proof our minds” was “the next best thing” …shouldn’t those be reversed??? You gotta leave the shack at some point????

According to journal 3, Ford was the one who encouraged Stan to take the kids on a road trip RIGHT AFTER BILL PROOFING THE SHACK, which completely defeats the purpose of doing that in the first place.

I’ve pointed this out before, “Mabel will be fine! I watched her become pen pals with the pizza delivery man in the 15 seconds he was at the door!” … Ford…that’s creepy has hell, keep that pizza delivery man away from your niece!”

When weirdmageddon started he wrote in his journal????? And drew a lovely little detailed image?????

See that little greenish sticky note at the top? That’s my little note that says “when did you have time to write this?????” Seriously what. “It’s the end of the world…i gotta draw this and write a little entry on it before I save everyone!!!” It’s the drawing that really gets me. Okay write a note in case someone else has to take over but WHY THE DRAWING

And finally, everyone is holding hands at the Cipher Wheel. Stan is essential and is refusing to join unless Ford thanks him for saving him. Ford reluctantly does so. It’s now clear that Stan is willing to put everyone, Dipper and Mabel included, at risk just because he wants a thank you, so Ford decides this is a really good time to CORRECT STAN’S GRAMMAR

Look I say this with love but,

Ford may be the smartest people in the room but he’s also the biggest dumbass in the room. This man has no wisdom.

Thelema, Oneiros, Gnosis This now, is the real title. Ink on watercolour (cotton) paper.  gimped the colours for this version.  Soon to be coloured in watercolour

These freaks don't know how to react to physical affection!! This is my vaguely valentine themed art give or take (・_・)ノ

cropped ver + some rambling!!

The original plan was to draw chibi ship art of the main ships; Pickles + Nathan, Toki + Skwisgaar, Murderface + Knubbler. Then maybe some solo valentine chibis of Charles and Abigail, but I got lazy :(

Perhaps I'll still do it, but I dunno!! I'm not good at committing to things lmao

Also My brain decided the main pen I was using was no longer good so now I'm on the search to find a new pen to use. This one was fun to use, but I don't think it'll be my new main. My art style is gonna be more inconsistent than usual for now,, (・・;)ゞ

Despite being art for valentines, this specific drawing wasn't inherently meant to be shipping. You can look at it however you want though, I don't care!! (´･ᴗ･ ` )

this was slightly inspired by a drawing I saw on Pinterest of Toki hugging everyone!! The idea was very cute :D

I like to draw Bill as a father