#fidelesir

Would you say he gets better, morally speaking, over the course of his story?

YEAH

as always, i’m heavily influenced by reading the book first, and i know a lot of people disagree with me on issues of morality, which is fine, they have their metric that works for them and i have mine for me, but i absolutely would say that aziraphale’s morality nudges a little closer to good and away from Good over the course of the story (and yeah, these are separate)

There’s Good, the faction, the Ones In The Right, and belonging to this group, following their orders, furthering their goals regardless of the chaos and suffering it causes around you, automatically places you in the good (lowercase), category, because the ones leading the Good group know best, and have to protect you from your own shortsightedness.

Or so the logic goes.

Aziraphale falls back on this a lot. He’s convinced that things will turn out the best for everyone if they just follow their assigned roles and do things in the prescribed way. (Crowley is well aware of this and can twist it around)

He likes to think of himself as good, because that’s a comfortable thing to be. Aziraphale is all about being comfortable, it’s right up there with his stubbornness in being both a huge strength and a huge weakness. He cares about harm and will take action when it’s 1: directly in front of his face and 2: he can do something about it immediately. But set things on a larger scale or out of sight and he sits down and shuts up. He becomes passive, avoids consequence for things that are effectively caused by his actions and/or inaction. (it’s not bad to be passive for your own safety, before anyone gets uncomfortable here, but if everyone closed their eyes at injustice 100% of the time, where would we be?)

in the end, when he does bad things, he does it himself, does it knowingly, doesn’t use a scapegoat. When lying to Shadwell, in the book, you get this line from Aziraphale’s point of view that I feel showcases this ongoing change perfectly: The end justifies the means, thought Aziraphale. And the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. He knows he’s going to be in shit, but he’s acting anyway because he can, he’s sacrificing his comfort for the good of others. He’s gone from that relative who tells you to dismiss your bigoted great-uncle because they were “raised in a different time” to the one who says “shut the fuck up, i think you’re a giant bag of open blisters and your opinions are worth shit-all," because everyone else knows they’ll be immediately shot down for speaking up. He knows, at this point, that saving the world won’t be easy or pretty or commendable, and is prepared to do it anyway, and by the end of both book and show, is holding a weapon himself in order to prevent everything from going to hell (metaphorically speaking)

my view of morality is that good and evil aren’t inherent qualities, and even then, not often useful terms to apply to people. Morality is a weird painful stew made up of an infinite number of ingredients. You throw in actions, intents, potentials, and outcomes, and you don’t end up with the same stew anyone else makes. So, no, Aziraphale isn’t good and Aziraphale isn’t bad, he’s just a person with a lot of choices to make, and by the end of the story, he understands this.

Oh gosh... profound? People, respect the play for the delicious nonsense that it is. Jaques isn't a role model. Love him to pieces, but he's supposed to be weird. Glad you had a good time at this one?

Hold on wait is Graves /literally/ a mob assassin

Well... no. I mean, Newt doesn’t think so? That kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life, not to random uni students who spend all their time crying over essays in a bakery. Mob assassins belong in newspapers and stories, not lurking somewhere by the croissants waiting to walk Newt home.

“Why, exactly, are you walking me home again?” Newt asks, stuffing no less that three failed drafts in his book bag and rescuing his highlighter from the floor. “Not that I mind you walking me home. Because I don’t. And mystery, mystery is cool. But. Why?”

Graves raises an unimpressed eyebrow. Over by the coffee machine, Jacob busies himself with rearranging the espresso cups just so and studiously avoids all attempts to make eye contact.

“It is not safe to walk alone,” Graves says, again, and Newt nods. Again.

“Sure, sure,” he says agreeably. “But why?”

Graves scowls and sweeps out the bakery in an over-dramatic flare of crisp pinstripe. Newt waves a hurried goodbye to Jacob (now actually counting the coffee beans with extreme nonchalance and still not looking up) and scuttles out after Graves.

Graves won’t give any further explanation, despite Newt’s masterful attempts at getting him to elaborate (”say, hypothetically, if you had a reason for doing the things you do, what part of that reason would involve walking me home?” “no.” “but -” “no.”) so Newt chalks it up to just Graves being Graves. Like the way Graves stares up at the window of Newt’s tiny apartment like it personally offended him, and declares it a potential safety hazard.

“Graves,” Newt says. “It’s a window.”

Graves glares. “It’s a target. I will get you kevlar.” He deposits Newt by his front door, waits until he has confirmed that Newt has locked both locks behind him, then turns smartly on his heel and leaves. Newt unlocks his door and sticks his head out to watch the man go, admiring both the tailored cut of his suit trousers (so worth watching from behind) and the weird juxtaposition of the sharp man in his sharp suit in Newt’s rundown apartment block.

He was joking about the kevlar. Definitely. Probably. Does Graves know how to joke? He must do. Which is more likely, that Graves was joking or that he’s actually going to get Newt a bullet proof vest to wear?

... Yeah, don’t answer that.

Still, Newt resolves to ask Jacob about it the next time he’s in the bakery, he does, he really does, except that the next time he goes to the bakery it’s cordoned off and there’s four police cars pulled up outside. Newt stares, mouth open. There’s armed police at his bakery. There’s - he can see them, they’re armed, those are guns. Guns! At Jacob’s bakery!

His brain catches up to his eyes and Newt goes white. “Jacob,” he says, gripping his book bag tighter. “Oh god.” He stumbles off the curb and towards the nearest police officer, because what if there’s been an accident, what if Jacob’s been hurt, what if -

Graves cuts across in front him, takes his hand, and spins Newt round to walk with him away from the bakery, all without breaking stride.

“You have the survival instincts of a baby elephant,” he snarls, quick marching the pair of them down the street. Newt cranes round, trying to both look at the bakery and not fall over, because a Graves on a mission is a Graves who can move and Newt may potentially be struggling to keep up.

Behind them, one of the policemen is saying something into his radio. The left-most police car has its lights on and is pulling out. Graves curses and pulls Newt down a side street.

“Graves, what the hell?” Newt gasps out breathlessly as he starts sprinting in a desperate attempt to keep him arm attached at the shoulder like it’s meant to be. Graves, the suave and sophisticated fucker that he is, runs with a smooth and elegant lope that puts Newt’s shambolic flailing to shame. “Graves why are we running, why are we - ow, stitch - Graves I think the police car is gaining on us why.”

Graves glances back once, verifies that yes, the police car is gaining on them because Newt’s top speed appears to be shuffle, swears violently, and hoists Newt into a piggy back.

“Graves!” Newt yells. “Graves. Why, godammit.”

They dive into what appears to be an unused warehouse (who knew they were just lying around for dramatic police chase purposes? Not Newt, but now he does) and Graves kicks the door shut behind them. He doesn’t loosen his grip or let Newt down.

“We will leave the city,” he says decisively, completely ignoring Newt’s question.

“We will not,” Newt replies hotly. “We have a seminar at three and an essay due on Monday. Graves, seriously. What the fuck is going on.”

Graves pauses. There’s the sound of hammering on the door, but it seems to be holding for now. Newt waits him out, because he’s been asking why for a while now, and he’s yet to get a straight answer, but really? He kinda feels like the situation calls for one.

“... You are one of Jacob’s friends,” Graves says. Asks? It’s hard to tell.

“Yes,” Newt answers patiently. “Jacob. The baker. Who runs the bakery. Who may or may not be bleeding out or in hospital right now.”

“He is alive.” There’s another pause, a longer one. Graves shifts on his feet, almost hesitant. Then: “You are a student,” he says finally. “You are actually a student. It is not a cover.”

“What? What - of course I’m a student, what else would I be?”

Graves mumbles. One of the hinges has come loose on the door and Newt can hear at least three people outside trying to break their way in. Newt grits his teeth in frustration. “Graves, I can’t hear you, and shouldn’t we really be going?”

Graves clears his throat and drops Newt on the floor. He reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket, his amazingly tailored suit jacket that Newt had noticed before had weirdly deep pockets but never actually noticed had suspiciously deep pockets, and pulls out a gun.

“Graves, what -”

“I thought you were trainee,” Graves says, louder. “Weird English trainee with no common sense that Jacob told me to protect.”

Newt stares. His mind reels. Reels. It’s still reeling when the police break the door down and Graves forces him to his knees, one hand in his hair forcing his head back and the other holding the gun to his temple. It reels while the police shout and Graves swears, and he’s pretty sure at one point Graves threatens to kill him if they shoot, and all he can think is he carried my book bag when he walked me home.

It’s still reeling after Graves has escaped. Shock, the police are saying. They call him a hostage victim. The papers print grainy CCTV photos of Graves dragging Newt down the street. HIT MAN FLEES CITY, the headlines proclaim, and the articles go into sordid detail on just how far reaching Jacob’s network had been and how extensive an operation he’d been running out of the bakery on the corner where Newt used to eat cake and write essays and try to teach Graves the wonder of actual conversation.

“I can’t believe you thought I was a trainee,” he tells the photo he cut out and stuck to his wall. “I spilled coffee on your shirt so you’d have to change it and I could see you topless! And you were an assassin!”

He sits down hard on the edge of his bed. “Holy shit,” he mumbles to himself. “An assassin.”

He just. He’s a uni student. He’s not even a particularly good or conscientious uni student. These things aren’t meant to happen to random uni students. The guy you thought you maybe a little bit were falling in love wasn’t supposed to pull a gun on you and use you as a human shield to escape. 

And the worst part?

Even after Graves threatened to shoot him in the head, he’s still the guy that walked Newt home every night and made faces at the lack of real food in his kitchen and caught Newt looking occasionally and went just that tiny bit red and flustered and what’s wrong with Newt.

Because maybe he’s still a bit in love with his assassin, and that feels suspiciously like the lack of survival skills or common sense that Graves keeps telling him off for, but. It doesn’t make it any less true.

Okay yes thank you so much

Cities I want to visit:

lol none I’m fine where I am

New York City

Moscow

San Francisco

Edinburgh

Barcelona

Colors:

red

that shade of dark pink that’s likethe color of raspberries

burgundy

brick red that’s like a bit orange and deep 

idk black is not a color I guess but I really only like red

Writers: 

Daniel Handler

Joseph Fink / Jeffrey Cranor (though they are very distinct with different writing styles as seen in their individual works, I’m putting them together because their common work on Welcome to Night Vale is really something unlike anything else)

Roald Dahl

George RR Martin

ridiculous mavis

Oh geez! You’d think I would, but by the time I realized I needed one, it was sort of too late....