(Source)

[spoilers] my beloved

Enjoy your Magnussing, Early Access Folk!

My most referenced meme is actually this sign from a furniture store's going out of business sale in my hometown.

My cartoon for this week’s New Scientist

I started watching this video, looked at the chapters in the description, saw that one was called OH GOD HE'S BACK, and for a moment was gripped by the certainty that it was going to be Somerton somehow. ( To be clear, it's not).

New Philosophy Tube premieres tonight at 1800 British time!

I'll be in the live chat from 1730!!!

I love how when we are first introduced to Vetinari, he's this all-powerful tyrant with spies everywhere, twenty steps ahead of everyone else, of whom people aren't even sure is human and then he proceeds to spend pretty much 90% of his time in the Watch books and The Truth being a damsel in distress (often with Vimes co-starring as the knight in shining armour) and is still seen as this all-powerful tyrant. Vimes hears someone call Vetinari unkillable and has to stop himself from snorting.

Well fuck.

For those who don't know, this doesn't mean that the RN has a majority in the Assembly. The system for legislative elections is particularly convoluted, and this is based on polls outside voting stations. Nevertheless, it's not a great sign.

Regarding the minisodes, I don't think the point was to show us that they trust each other implicitly. It's something I've been thinking about, so excuse the long reply.

The flashbacks in season 1, IMO, had 2 purposes:

Showing us how their relationship came to be as it is in present day. How they met, how they started getting along, how the Agreement came to be, fall out and reconciliation that they had over the centuries, etc.

Setting up the Holy Water ( if I remember the book correctly, it only shows up for the scene in Crowley's apartment, he didn't get it from Aziraphale and since the body swap is TV only, it never comes up again)

Your mileage may vary, but I think that this season's minisodes were only partially about their relationship (because everything is at least a bit about their relationship), they were more about Aziraphale. Specifically, Aziraphale's moral struggles.

A companion to Owls (the Job Minisode) shows us Aziraphale lying to the Heavenly Host to protect humans, and being very miserable about it (as a side note, I was screaming "Dude, you lied to GOD in the garden of Eden" during my first viewing, but on careful re-watch, his "I must have put the sword down somewhere" can still fall under the "technically true if extremely misleading" category, which apparently doesn't count for him).

In the Resurrectionists, Aziraphale spents most of his time encountering consequentialism for the first time, and trying to reconcile it with a deontological philosophy. Is defiling tombs a Wrong thing to do, if it leads to Good? I might be thinking to much about it, but it's interesting to see that after some reluctance, Aziraphale has a pretty standard reaction to encountering Consequentialism : it's great! It solves so many problems! And then runs smack down into 2 classic counter-arguments to Consequentialism: 1. you cannot actually know what the consequences to your actions are going to be (i.e., Wee Morag dying). 2. Consequentialism implies that the subject should be impartial as to who benefits and who suffers, as long as the overall Good outweighs the bad. But as Crowley points out, "It's different when you know them, isn't it?"

The moral argument in Nazi Zombie Flesheaters is at the very end. Aziraphale says that Crowley helping him means that he's not as bad as he says. Crowley replies that Heaven sees thing in black and white and sometimes, you have to blur the edges. They toast to shades of grey. Very very light/dark grey. And that's basically the moral position of Aziraphale as we know him in the present day: willing to make some concessions. But it's a compromise, and it's more about Crowley being good than, for instance, Heaven being bad.

The minisodes do other things, of course. A Companion to Owls reminds us of how awful Gabriel was, the Resurrectionists makes a link to the pub and explains why Crowley asks for the Holey Water, the Nazi Zombie Flesheaters shows us the trust (and I'll bet money that we haven't seen the last of these zombies). But I think they do work as foreshadowing for Aziraphale being overjoyed at the idea of being friend with Crowley without the moral complications.

(The discussion in the other reblogs was great, but I wanted to answer some points in this post specifically)

Can someone who actually liked the ending of s2 please explain to me why?

Clean version of a comic I drew in history class