I Caved

Some of the subtle clues that Aziraphale and Crowley switched bodies

Bonus - not so subtle anymore, where ‘Crowley’ is sitting prim and proper and ‘Aziraphale’ kind of lying on the bench

THANK YOU.

I’m honestly glad I was not the only one skeeved out by this because honestly - I’ve been wanting to say it for years, but I was always terrified that someone would say I was just reading into it too much.

I mean…let’s be frank (especially if we are talking about parallels to rape/sexual assault):

Tony was a playboy - he was not shy about his drinking, sexual history, or lifestyle. He had garnered a reputation for it. While fun loving and a good time kind of guy, he makes sure that consent is present during any liaison.

Here’s Obediah - this huge wall of a guy, acting like a friend and mentor. It gives him an in to be close, touchy-feely under the guise of a friend. Tony trusts him, hence why the closeness doesn’t bother him. That’s just how Obie is! Right? Right….

Tony has a traumatic encounter that changes his entire life….and no one takes him seriously. Pepper, Rhodey, Obediah - they are all guilty of trying to tell him that he just needs to sit back and get over it/get his mind straight/threaten to walk out on him because they think he’s crazy.

Huh….what does that sound like? Sounds like dismissal - a regrettably loathsome reaction many have towards victims of trauma and while not malicious (except for established douchebag Obediah), it can make bad situations worse and gives Obediah the perfect in for Tony’s downfall (the injunction, claiming it’s for his own good, all that jazz…exerting a shit ton of power over Tony and simultaneously trying to strip Tony of what power he has left)

To make matters worse - the scene itself where Obediah assaults Tony: Tony is alone. He is vulnerable. Obediah overpowered him, incapacitated him, but left him fully aware of what was going on. He penetrated him without consent (the mechanism literally punched in and pulled his “heart” out), gas lit him to hell and back by using not only his own past but his father’s past to justify his treatment bring “deserved”…..and then leaving him broken and for dead.

The reason a lot of people didn’t view it that way: we don’t normally see a man - especially an outgoing superhero type - being stripped of his agency in a brutally visceral manner. Its s shocking scene to begin with….but it gradually gets worse when you put it through the lens of a rape victim.

(yes i spent way too much time making that.)

When Tony gets back from Afghanistan, gets out of the car with the burgers, Obadiah has at least one of his hands on him the entire way into the building. As someone else mentions – he buttons up tony’s shirt which - yeah tony has a busted arm, but he unbuttoned it relatively easily – so the creep factor still applies. and then you’ve got the other examples too. Also the fact that they’re business partners//mentor/mentee//father/son dynamic …. and obadiah deadass calls tony shirtless. like i dont know much about grown men but im pretty sure thats not that common even among friends. 

and anyway if we look at the other characters who touch tony in this movie, it’s rhodey and pepper and christine. Tony in this movie doesn’t initiate touch nearly as much – he usually reacts to it (e.g. even though he’s the ‘playboy’ christine is the one who takes the lead in sex. rhodey is the one who initiates almost all of their contact, etc). after this movie that changes. You can definitely see him start to initiate almost all touch, except with pepper and rhodey (e.g. him poking bruce, him slapping steves hand off him, but putting one on steve). this is definitely a way of asserting contol over a situation – idk if the writers did it purposefully…probably not, but it is interesting. one could argue, i suppose that afghanistan/torture is the cause, but….i think him being scarred by obadiah is more likely.  

also, Obadiah used tony’s name. A Lot. We don’t really think about it bc with the Avengers it’s always last name, last name, last name. (the ones who call him tony are easy to notice – fury, pepper, rhodey, sometimes steve). But Obadiah uses Tony’s name a lot more than seemingly necessary. And we all know calling people by their first names is a way of acknowledging them as a person, but also it also indicates familiarity/fondness aka a bond. Someone compiled a video of it. 

And by that I mean that without a scene of Steve being metaphorically punched in face, we could easily feel as though Steve never looked back on his actions, including splitting the Avengers apart (whatever your opinion on the Sokovia Accords, Tony does have a point that they should have dealt with it/Bucky/the super soldiers as a team). But with this? While I find it sad that Steve rejected Tony’s offer to stay for lunch and stuff like that, we -can- interpret it as Steve just being physically unable to relax even for a second because he’s so consumed by guilt over what Tony told him all those years ago, in this specific scene. It is, to me, a preferable explanation as to why he kept on fighting even with a broken shield and no chance at winning when he’s faced with Thanos. Steve already had so many heroic badass moments, and I think interpreting his character this way- desperate to atone for a mistake- allows for a more nuanced analysis of his character. The not moving on? It’s not just about the vanished, it’d be about not being able to be at peace with the one time he made a decision he now sees was the wrong one.

Like with Ultron (which yes, he was its main creator, but his mind had been seriously messed with by Wanda AND he didn’t build it on his own- don’t tell me Bruce couldn’t have said no when one of the best things about Avengers!Bruce was the delicious fact that Bruce always knew exactly what kind of power he had and a part of him almost seemed to relish going green), or with the avengers’ Civil War (again, not about the Accords here - I actually side with both men here, the heroes should work with the government but if the government starts being crappy then they fight against it - so much as the fact that Steve chooses to break everything right away instead of even trying for a compromise). Definitely not saying Tony is blameless, one of the things I like about him so much is how nuanced he is, but he always shoulders the fall for it himself. Especially with Ultron.

So when everyone tried to pin the blame of the Civil War just on him, he at first just shouldered it, but when he -finally- cracked he was finally able to tell everyone how he felt. It must have been so freeing to him, I always love how he collapses after he does that, as if putting it out there is that overwhelming. Tony’s such an avoidant kind of guy (I think the first time we see him cry in a movie like, ever, was in IW after the combined blow of thanos winning + watching Peter die?), and he bottles things up so much, I pretty much -felt- the relief of this moment with him.

In this scene, Robert Downey Jr. improvised the discussion between Tony and Steve in the Avengers Endgame!

he deserves the oscar.

Okay but I love these photos so much.

Our mcu Loki is not the Loki of comics. Thor just k n o w s this chaos and fire and death is not characteristic of his brother. I just think this scene says so much about how Thor thinks of Loki. And THEN Loki actually responds to Thor’s expectations by saying he thinks it too late. He doesn’t say ‘you don’t know me’, he doesn’t laugh, or sneer. He lets Thor know he feels helpless in that moment. It’s sweet.