aziraphale constantly expresses his admiration and adoration for crowley by telling him he's nice, and good, and thanks him for what he does for him, calls him all the time to tell him things, "our car" and "our bookshop". and then dear, sweet crowley, who cannot go a single minute without doing something for aziraphale, driving him around everywhere, looking after and tidying the bookshop, indulging him in his earthly pleasures and quaint little hobbies, saving him even when he doesn't necessarily ask to be saved, "little demonic miracle of my own" and "alright, I'll do that one, my treat."
their methods of communicating their - friendship, affection, love - are set.
let's look at the bandstand, where crowley offers to magic them away, away from earth and the loom of armageddon, and aziraphale retaliates with stating that they're not friends and he's doesn't even like him. let's look at the So Did I argument, where crowley offers to whisk gabriel away and dump him on the moors so aziraphale doesnt have to deal with it and is no longer under threat from the former archangel, and aziraphale practically begs crowley to stay, that he'd "love [him] to help [him]".
their methods of communicating their - friendship, affection, love - are being rejected; they're not working.
let's look at 1967, where aziraphale gives in to giving crowley the holy water, but refuses the lift to anywhere he wants to go, and crowley offers to thank aziraphale, but refuses to hear aziraphale's verbal concerns about the danger it poses to him, "you told me what you think - 105 years ago." let's look at the final fifteen, where aziraphale offers to restore crowley to what he thinks crowley has always been yearning for, and crowley tries to tell aziraphale exactly what he means to him, put it into words what he hopes aziraphale will see through and understand.
their methods of communicating their - friendship, affection, love - are swapped, and break them apart altogether.
swapping those methods, in a guesswork effort to reach the other person better, isn't the answer. the action, and what is being said, is what needs to change. crowley offers things that aziraphale doesn't want, or goes against who he is fundamentally, and aziraphale says things that wound crowley deeply, reducing what they are to nothing in a few sharp words. so instead crowley tries to use words, and aziraphale tries to offer an act of devotion; but this doesn't work either - arguably, it's worse!
what they communicate needs to be clearer, not how. crowley needs to stay with aziraphale when he promises that he will, and not attempt to solve problems by running from what he doesn't want to face, threatening to abandon him in the process. aziraphale needs to express outright, plainly, what crowley needs to hear; that exactly as he is, everything that he is, is everything that aziraphale wants and respects and loves. and to be able to do that, they need start by giving each other the respect of acknowledging their respective boundaries, their fears, and what principles are important to them.
they've had their methods right all along, but what they're currently saying with them doesn't make sense. it's the french all over again; the words can be translated, "but you understood me!", but that doesn't mean that it makes any sense.
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hello I Adore bastille may you share her lore with us please
here's a lil primer on her!
Lore-wise she's a gruff, brick shithouse with a soft center, disillusioned by the two fingers but put off by Varre and the cult of blood, who found herself at Volcano Manor and felt the rhetoric of Tanith and Bernahl stir her anger properly. She's probably closest to Bernahl in temperament, understanding that hunting other tarnished is Not Great but the world is dying all around her So.
Game-Wise she was a prisoner bc this is my first fromsoft game and i was leaning on magic (i say "magic" i mean glintstone blade) while i learned the game. around liurnia/rennala i kind of had a better handle on it and respecced to a strength build to follow my desire to wield fuck off huge colossal weapons.
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I think what people are missing when they say "The girls took all the powerful moments from the guys!!" or "Egwene would never have been able to stand up to Ishy for even a moment!" is that...the women are never standing alone when they do their incredible acts.
I think even book readers forget the massive buff being near other ta'veren gives the characters in the books and the power of working in a team.
In the season 1 finale, unlike Rand in the books, Egwene doesn't demolish a whole army of trollocs alone, nor does Nynaeve, nor do any of the other women there. Egwene and Nynaeve don't even cast any of the attack weaves at all. They are linked and Amalisa - a Tower trained individual - uses the collective power of all the women standing there to demolish the battlefield.
in the season 2 finale, they set it up all the way back in episode 1: "Standing alone, a shield only covers part of you, the rest is exposed. But standing together, our shields cover each other and nothing can touch us."
When Egwene stands up to Ishamael, she's not attacking him. She's making a shield. And she's not doing it alone. Mat and Rand are there too, two more powerful ta'veren converging in the Pattern with her, with two more on the way.
It's amazing how quickly book readers forget the plot convenience power of ta'veren Robert Jordan very purposely wrote into the story!
In the final confrontations of both seasons, Rand IS the one who strikes the final blow - he's the one who has to mentally 'defeat' Ishamael. It's Rand's decisions that determine the outcome in both - not Egwene's opinions on the matter, not Nynaeve's. The idea that a random mass attack is a more impactful character moment than overcoming the temptation of Ishy's promise of a perfect world for Rand to live in, that Rand declaring firmly and to Ishy's face that he will never join the shadow never stop fighting for the Light, is just ridiculous.
None of Rand's actually impactful, story-defining moments are given to 'the girls'. The show is not 'pushing Rand down so the women can be made more powerful'. If that's what you think, I'd take a look at what you think is 'powerful' and then take a look at the actual story Robert Jordan wrote and what he had to say about what wins the battle in the end. Was it sheer, raw power that won the conflict or was it strength of self (internally knowing who you are and not caving on your morals for power or influence or glory), community, and compassion?
Yeah, Rand is the character with the most raw power - but that's not why he wins battles and I think his big power moments will mean so much more in the show now that we've seen WHO HE IS and WHY he's using that power.
This isn't to say the explosions of power that Nynaeve and Egwene get aren't meaningful - I think the way the show has altered them to be about community support makes that act so much more powerful than a single character floating above the battlefield and demolishing it all on their own.
So in conclusion, I don't think the criticisms that "Rafe hates men and is giving all Rand's important stuff to the women!!" are accurate in the slightest.
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