In the art of life

We belong together

Sarah starts off disliking her brother, and feeling like she’s being put upon because of him. She goes to rescue him not because she cares so much about him, but to avoid trouble for herself. At the end she rescues him, but there is no joy for her. She doesn’t appreciate or love him any more than she did at the start. She maybe tolerates him a bit more, but she’s in no way grateful he’s still around.

1) In the start of the film, Sarah is very possessive over her toys, specifically the stuffed bear, Lancelot. She becomes furious to see that the bear was taken from her collection, declaring “I hate it! I hate you!” when she finds the bear in Toby’s room. She cares more about her things than her little brother.

While in the Labyrinth, Sarah is repeatedly tempted to abandon her quest. When she is dropped in a garbage dump after eating a poisoned peach, the trash goblin there gives Sarah a re-creation of her beloved stuffed bear, Lancelot, and the option to stay inside a perfect copy of her bedroom. She can have all her beautiful things forever, as long as she gives up Toby. Sarah, forgetful from the peach, is swayed at first, but soon realizes it’s a trick, shouting “it’s all junk! I have to save Toby!”

At the end of the film, she tucks Lancelot in next to the sleeping Toby, reinforcing that she has realized her brother is more important than her things.

2) When first entering the Labyrinth, Sarah has many presumptions about how things were supposed to work; fairies are sweet and kind and grant wishes, walls don’t move, door are obvious, and there’s no need to ask questions.

However, as the adventure goes on, Sarah chooses to approach things with an open mind. When she hears Ludo roaring, she says “things aren’t what they seem” and takes the risk to approach what sounds like a terrible monster. In the end, she gets a dear friend.

(This can be argued as tying back to her behavior with her father, stepmother, and little brother, all of whom she assumed the worst of.)

3) Relating to the above, Sarah spends much of the early film declaring “that’s not fair!” to life’s inconveniences, Jareth’s challenges, and the Labyrinth’s weirdness.

When she takes Hoggle’s jewels in retaliation for tricking her, he yells “thems my rightful property! It’s not fair!” She says “no, it isn’t” and you can see understanding hit her as she continues “but that’s the way it is”. The world isn’t always going to conform to her needs and expectations, and she’s been making things harder on herself by refusing to accept that.

4) When we’re first introduced to Sarah’s room we’re given a long, slow pan of her many fantasy-themed belongings. This shot serves two purposes.

The first is to hint at the fantastical things coming; many of the creature and events in the Labyrinth are reflected in Sarah’s books, toys, and pictures.

The second is to establish how Sarah retreats into fantasy to avoid her problems; a point emphasized when the camera swings to Sarah and we see her doing her makeup while quoting from a fairytale, despite having just had an argument with her stepmother.

"'fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture"

Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.  

#like you've never known such pure fucking relief as watching ed & stede kiss for the first time after decades of queerbaiting

#like the writers could have left them as the subtext and tropes featured in eps 1-8 that queer fans are used to identifying #but this show actually takes care of and respects its fans and even if you don't like this ship/show we gotta show some respect to that

#like what other show has a middle aged indigenous jewish man and a middled aged autistic man finding their first loves in their late 40s??

#and not just has them as an irrefutably canon couple but their relationship is the entire A plot of the show?? literally revolutionary

#like I'm genuinely confused by stucky fans saying their fan fic is gonna override OFMD's insane impact on the future of queer media??

#OFMD shows studios that you can have a wildly successful show centred around an mlm ship AND still appeal to mainstream audiences

#THAT is what influences and builds more queer media for us to enjoy folks

#and tbc this is just addressing comments I've seen in the replies btw I know the poll itself has nothing to do with media impact or whatever

#like i 100% voted for stucky in the poll bc i don't really care for stede so I don't read fic involving him #but CHRIST y'all

#you can like one ship/media better and not tear down another ship/media entirely #these tags are not it

tags from @dorian-they-ao3

To Aziraphale, Crowley is cool and brave. Crowley wouldn't show an ounce of fear, they'd be suave and confident, Crowley Would put on a bit of a show.

And Aziraphale isn't one to go back and Talk about how he felt. We only know about Crowley's reaction as in depth as we do, not because they Talk about it with Aziraphale, but because the story confronts Crowley dead on with Gabriel. Crowley uses the description of events as a persuasion tactic with Aziraphale and then we see them spell it out for Jimbriel later. But it isn't like Aziraphale gets a chance to tell off Beelzebub

As someone who reads acd canon & has the autistic urge to correct people about my interests, I'd like to let it be known that he actually primarily uses drugs between cases, because he gets painfully bored with nothing to do, stating "my mind rebels at stagnation." This is because he has adhd but the diagnosis hadn't been invented yet. Anyway

there’s a variety of theories floating about out there but I personally believe he was saying “I forgive you” in the celestial sense because like. Aziraphale is basically the right hand of God now, right? So saying “I forgive you” is him saying “I’m not going to condemn you or cast you out for rejecting Heaven.” “I forgive you” as in “I won’t hold this choice against you.”

So the “I forgive you” leaves the door open. Aziraphale is waiting for Crowley to change his mind. Crowley is waiting for Aziraphale to come to his senses. So S3 is gonna be all about who caves in first, which is basically like putting two marbles on a slope & seeing which one gravity decides will reach its inevitable conclusion first.

bottom line is these are two beings who love each other and know they both want to spend eternity together but they’re currently having a disagreement over a job offer. A job offer from an historically corrupt company that Aziraphale believes could make a difference in the world with the right person in charge. The problem is not only is he not actually going to be in charge, but this job is going to move them across the universe from the home they’ve built together & force them to give up all of their prized worldly possessions while also requiring both of them to be working for said company. A company that Crowley was fired from several millennia ago all because he asked too many questions and didn’t agree with what management was doing. And now that he’s gotten comfortable being a plantdad-househusband who fudges memos to home office, he really doesn’t want to return to any work at all, let alone for the awful company that fired him in the first place.

So either Aziraphale needs to actually start making a enough of a positive difference that Crowley can admit that Heaven is sort of alright now (unlikely), or, after Aziraphale makes some sweeping celestial changes, he realises his work is basically done so he can leave the company in good hands (hello Muriel) and go back home to his life & his husband, kiss & make up, and live happily ever after (even more unlikely).

OR — and most likely — Aziraphale needs to realise that no matter what he does he can’t change The Way Things Are bc the system of Heaven & Hell itself is broken and needs to be demolished. So he abandons Heaven, reunites with Crowley, does the I Was Wrong dance, and fights alongside the humans in the upcoming Us vs Them battle, hand-in-hand with the love of his nearly-endless existence. And then we’ll ALL live happily ever after.

This should sound very familiar to anyone who grew up in the USA or Britain because that’s what imperialistic countries teach their children. It should also be familiar to anyone who has escaped from a cult, joined an MLM, or was raised by Christian conservatives. It’s classic “Us vs Them” propaganda that makes you feel good about yourself when you’re doing the “right” thing and bad when you’re doing the “wrong” thing so you isolate yourself from anyone perceived as being “not on our side.”

At this point, Aziraphale still believes he can make a difference because he thinks the problem in Heaven has been with the people in charge of the organisation and not the organisation itself. This was demonstrated by the Job sequence and most recently when Crowley mentioned in 2x6 that humans would still be dying whether Heaven or Hell did the killing. We’ve very much been gearing up for a “both sides are wrong” sort of story.

Unfortunately it seems Aziraphale needs to discover for himself that he cannot fix this corrupt system, even from the inside, because the rot exists at its roots. It’s going to be a hard lesson, but he needs to understand and accept that he was never actually on the “right” side all along and that there is, in fact, no “right side.” There’s just people and occult entities, doing the best they can. So he’s going to have quite the identity crisis and a crisis of faith next season, but it will ultimately be worth it because he’ll finally be able to see the truth.

GOOD OMENS + TEXT POSTS [1/?]

Bonus:

the massive, poorly constructed environmental risk that spat all over the Standing Rock Sioux people's treaty rights? that dug up their sacred burial sites? the one where the oil corporation who owned it bought out a private company to do a sham of an "environmental analysis" and never consulted the tribe and STILL didn't actually get approval? the one that's literally operating illegally and without proper permits right fucking now?

yeah, that.

you remember that.

surprising absolutely no one, the army corps of engineers this week (September 8, 2023) released an EIS (environmental impact statement) draft for public comment that takes into account absolutely 0 of the tribe's concerns, and in fact did not consult with them once in the process!

they're going to officially approve the pipeline.

what's the good news?

IT'S A DRAFT. YOU CAN SUBMIT PUBLIC COMMENT RIGHT NOW UNTIL NOVEMBER 13!!!

This link RIGHT HERE (https://action.lakotalaw.org/action/dapl-eis-2023) will take you to a Lakota Law Project page where they've set up a form to make it easy to submit a comment.

All you have to do is add your name, email, and zip code, and it pulls up a form with a pre-written message you can just click and submit, listing the most pressing concerns. You can also personalize it if you want, but you don't have to. This will take you two minutes. Please.

you can also access the comment information on the USACE website here, email [email protected] yourself, or call Brent Cossette, the contact for the draft, at 402-995-2716!!!