Here Are A Couple More Sketches With This Charming Wizard. There Is Even A Small Sketch Of His Grumpy

We saw something interesting ... Although it looks more like Bill is showing off his new gloves, heh😆

Inktober Day 15: Legend

Common, what did you expect me to draw? Legend?? Of COURSE it would be Stanley Pines.( ^∀^) It didn’t turn out as grand as I had hoped, it doesn’t look nearly as cool as it did in the show.. But I’m happy with it. Its Stan! How can I not be happy with it?? (♡´౪`♡)

Started in 2021 and finished in 2022

Happy New Year everyone!

Аutumn art

I painted this art for one good friend dear to my heart. I took her invented OS and put her next to Bill as his wife.

Ford and Mabel Bonding!

because because because,,,

I gotta,,,

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.

i'm so sad you ship billford.... im not gonna lecture you i just. sighs. i love your art so much this is really upsetting. :(((

We gonna have this conversation again?

At this point go take it up with Alex, cause it’s pretty much canon.

BOOK OF BILL SPOILERS BELOW

It’s REALLY hard to ignore all the language surrounding Bill’s relationship with Ford and how he pursues him, he follows the dating advice he gives in the book to a T

- Leaving dead rats/mice for Ford

- Ford is the only “partner” that Bill is openly vulnerable with and gives him some insight to his past and his experience (also referring to him as a partner)

- The “Love Cage” advice he gives, where he said go trap your date and sing them a song. And if you remember, Bill traps Ford in the Fearamid and sings to him “We’ll Meet Again”, which was a song written for WWII soldiers who were away from their lovers

“I’m Your Puppet” by James & Bobby Purify that Ford gets in his head, a love song, that also places Ford in his role in the relationship.

THE FLIRTING “you can call me anything but late to dinner”, “I think I’m starting to like you” and saying the same thing then saying “jinx”. GET A ROOM

Both got jealous when the other thinks they’re with someone else. Ford thinking Bill’s “inspiring another scientist” when he doesn’t see Bill for a few weeks, and Bill calling Fiddleford a “third wheel”.

Then when they break it off, Bill goes on a sad drunken rampage. Which you don’t do for someone who you don’t at least care about, especially not someone who’s just a friend

Bill gives Ford 3 days to turn the portal on and asks himself “What was I, a saint? And why did I do it- some misplaced sentimentality”

Even Mabel basically said Bill has a thing for Ford “you’re like a super needy ex” “go crush on someone else’s uncle”

They were definitely more than friends, from what I see it was mostly one-sided on Bill’s part.

Maybe Ford did feel something, it was definitely a relationship that made him feel good, more in tune with his brain and body, and gave him a big boost of confidence. He went to Bill for comfort when he was stressed and vented to him about stuff. Bill made Ford happy…while it was good anyway.

Was this a healthy relationship? FUCK NO!

Bill was mentally and physically abusive, manipulative, and possessive (LITERALLY). He spiked Ford’s drink after Ford said no to having one and got him fucked up. Bill took Ford’s body on a joyride and did horrible things to Ford that we see in the pictures and thing we DONT see in the video. All to make him comply and get the portal running. Calling Ford his PROPERTY.

But it’s a good story of overcoming an abusive relationship, which is great representation tbh, Ford is happier and has his family to love him now.

Normally Alex is great at leaving things up to interpretation, but I can’t ignore the intentional and not at all subtle way he depicted Bill and Ford’s relationship. There’s even seeds of it in the interview with Hana and TGFF

Go take it up with Hirsch, cause I’m just using what he gave me

Yup, that's Ford's niece.

honestly, crackship or not, Ford being shipped with Belos is icky to me