#dagonl

[patricianandclerk]

With regards to the tv verse, what are the other angles besides Aziraphale doing all day? In the show it looks like Micheal directly investigates stuff for Gabriel. I would think God’s fine with Sandalphon’s job description as basically “just hang out with Gabriel.” But what about literally everyone else? The show never really made it clear if they do miracles from heaven and in the past Old Testament smiting.

talk to me about angels

I think the lowest run on the angelic hierarchy is probably field agents. Aziraphale, and people like him - very very junior angels. With that said, I do not think that most of the field agents are stationed on Earth all the time, like Aziraphale is. They probably have a set of cubicles on one of the lower floors, and go out and occasionally answer one or two prayers, do a few minor miracles, check stuff out... They’re interacting with humans, and that’s what they do.

A rung above those field agents are the other field agents whose job it is to tangle with demons. They might be paired up with the lowest rung of field agents 1-1, just so it’s a standard agent and their trained guard, or something like that, but there’s definitely field agents whose job it is to fight demons, and then there’ll also be a department in charge of espionage and figuring shit out about demons and Hell. 

The bulk of the floors are probably research and filing. A lot of angels doing a lot of clerk work - writing down everything the humans have done today. All the humans born, all of them dead, but also just. Tallying up every single person’s good and bad deeds. 

I feel like--

Bear with me here, but I feel like with ten million angels, it’s not exactly 1-1 on guardian angels, but that all of these angels have a few hundred humans to deal with at a time (although I feel like there’s specific angels dedicated to babies because of the infant mortality rate, globally), and those humans are anonymised. So they probably have like... I don’t know, a number assigned to them for a year, and then after a  year the numbers are shuffled around the departments, so that no one gets too attached to any individual humans, or worse, individual families. The anonymous nature of the job is crucial - the field agents, as well, are sent out for short periods in different areas each time, to avoid getting too attached. 

And then up top, you have the big money. You have:

acquisitions (the angels who do deal with specific humans, but are specifically going out and looking for saints, sinners to bring onside, and dealing with prophets and the like)

the angels dealing with actually going through the data from the recording angels, and deciding who they’re going to cherrypick from the crop and take up to Heaven - and these angels are probably debating with demons on a day-to-day basis in a trial setting, for when the Hell/Heaven argument gets difficult

the upper management who oversee everything

the angels who do stuff like... keep track of the dead humans and deal with those who’ve already ascended to Heaven. i think these ones are probably thought of as pretty weird, and are like... the hippie camp counsellors of Heaven, who the main crop don’t want to deal with

the angels Of things, who get a lot of personal prayers, but also keep the prayers in general coming in or whatever

And then you have your generals who are running regular drills to keep angels on top of their weaponry, with their swordskills intact, etc.

Uriel, I feel, is in command of those training forces, but I feel like she also oversees a lot of those anonymous records; Michael commands the actual armies (not in a training context); Sandalphon seems to have done stuff on Earth, but he very much comes across as mid-management?

And then Gabriel, who runs the company and is that... weirdly liberal manager who gives everyone a high five and is super high energy even though you’re 100% sure he doesn’t know what’s going on most of the time. 

Michael is usually depicted as the one leading Heaven, and to be honest, she is leading Heaven, but Gabriel is the face on the stamp, and I find that to be a really interesting idea. 

[hoseawasright]

I never got to give Hosea his book because he wouldn’t ever be away from Dutch while planning the Saint Denis bank robbery. I just wanted to give my gay cowboy dad a gift 😢

[dictionarywrites]

For the jotun hour, do you have any headcanons for cultural group activities/rituals?

I definitely see the Jotnar as having an extremely strong tradition of storytelling and poetry, much like the other peoples of the Nine Realms. Especially for a culture where you have ice on all sides, I think that the Jotnar would be in a very unique position to preserve stuff, so I feel like they genuinely still have some of the first books the Jotnar ever had, and I just think that’s... A really cool concept.

I also love the idea of Jotunn music as something relatively haunting to outsiders, because they’d be playing with sounds like those of the theremin or the like, and really using the ice around them to their advantage?

Like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with what ice over a body of water sounds like, but it’s just a glorious noise, and I absolutely love it - it’s really something I try to factor in when I think of the sounds that the Jotnar would really love. Stuff like ice in glaciers grinding together, that creak of ancient ice; sounds like cracks and pops, but then this...

Isn’t that just a wonderful noise? Isn’t that just so bizarre, so different to any other sounds in nature?

I also very much like the idea that the Jotnar believe in sharing baths as a whole cultural thing - kind of like the Castithans in Defiance, but without the vaguely sexual undertones. I love the idea of Jotunn baths as super big - those are always an act of like, huge luxury from most cultures’ perspective, simply because you’re thinking of like, how difficult the water will be to warm or keep warm, but if the Jotnar have a sea with a VERY high salinity, just so that it won’t melt, I really adore the idea that they have their baths as something similar. 

I kind of see the Jotnar as a whole being naturally solitary people, so everyone has their own space, and there isn’t so much of a focus on like, monogamy where you go and have a marriage home together. Instead, everyone kinda lives in a bigger shared space, with their own like, cells where they settle together.

I certainly see them as being more focused on shared possessions rather than being massively big on the concept of private property themselves.

Now, for some Jotnar, the whole communal living thing just isn’t something they’re into, so there are smaller groups of Jotnar wandering about - nomads and the like - and then you have the solitary Jotnar who carve out their own space, like Angrboda. 

[patricianandclerk]

In all honesty you add so much more depth to Gabriel. He can easily be written off as the asshole manager who only wants positive status reports. Instead you make him way more interesting. Seeing him struggle with his interactions knowing that he doesn’t get the full picture while everyone else just knows? I cry. Seeing him want to share with Aziraphale his experiences and interests only for Gabriel to be awkwardly brushed off? I really cry. If this is woobifying him then please continue.

I actually very jokingly used the word woobify because like... I really dislike it, as it literally means “when you present a character in a sympathetic light”, usually meaning that you downplay their crimes, except that like...

In my opinion, for most characters, that’s part and parcel of displaying their point of view. Aziraphale’s behaviour is very bad in the A/G A/C series, but when I write the next piece, which is from Aziraphale’s POV and digs into like, his view of the situation, what he views sex with Crowley as representing, his own fears of intimacy, I think that’ll shed a lot of light on his insecurities and make his behaviour a lot more likable.

I think there’s been this problem in fanfic in recent years where people expect everyone’s motivations to be clearcut and simple, and for there to be Good Guys and Bad Guys, and to be honest, I don’t ever write purely Good Guys and purely Bad Guys. 

Everyone has their own reason for something, and every character must be empathised with in order to be written. Not endorsed, not forgiven, but I have to be able to understand how they feel, and to present their POV in a way coloured by their experiences, and therefore not by any “objective” moral judgement on their behaviour.

So yes! I shall woobify! Oh, God, shall I woobify!

[patricianandclerk]

the funniest kink concept is sex pollen because it uses moon logic to make two characters desperately horny enough to fuck while everyone else is writing slow burn

It is a funny concept, lmao.

I admit, Sex Pollen (like Fuck or Die or like the Rut/Heat Cycle in A/B/O) is just.... One of those tropes I’ve never gotten. I don’t find it really engaging or hot, because one or both characters have their higher thought capacity stripped away, and I tend to find that... boring, outside of a specific scenario orchestrated by a third party or something else, you know?

Ah. There’s nowt so queer as people’s kinks. 

[patricianandclerk]

Your posts about DA:I make we want to play it again, but I just can’t do all the fetch quests and tedious missions. There needs to be a story mode so I can just make dialogue choices and fawn over the characters.

I feel that. I’m already aware that like... replay might not be the easiest thing in the world just because of all ten billion sidequests, with so many of them just being fetch quests, like. 

[dictionarywrites]

@all of the Odin Stan posts. It’s really great to see BOTH Odin and Frigga being written as deeply flawed characters. A noticeable section of fanfics love to absolve Frigga but damn Odin. It’s way too common to write Odin as comically villainous rather than a father who just fails to honestly protect and understand his son. Usually Frigga is written were she’s pretty perceptive if Loki, but it would be cool to see where there are gaps in her understanding or where she just cannot accept Loki

LIKE...

I think Frigga is perceptive of Loki.

I think that, you know, she’s kind of aware that Loki is unhappy growing up on Asgard, despite his love of his brother, but I think that Frigga and Thor share a flaw when it comes to thinking about Loki, where they’re kinda convinced that the only way Loki can be happy if he learns to love himself on Asgard. But the thing is, like, Loki is never going to be happy on Asgard, amidst the AEsir. It’s impossible, and it’s unfair to expect him to learn to love this AEsir version of himself that he’s desperately constructed over time, but that goes against his nature and what he’s meant to be, what he’s meant to be comfortable with, et cetera, et cetera.

I do think Frigga is very understanding. Unlike Odin, who I think responded to Loki’s un-AEsir leanings with fear and an immediate “nope!”, but Frigga, I think, was like... Aw shit, you know, he doesn’t know why he feels this way all the time, but I know, but we can’t just... Tell him.

Because I think that like, there was a kind of awareness on Frigga’s part - both Odin and Frigga really came to love Loki as one of their own, and where Odin was so terrified of Loki having to undergo the pain of understanding what he was, I think that Frigga would have kinda been like, logically, it would be better if he knew what he was... But then Loki would leave. He would probably return to Jotunheimr, or go somewhere else entirely, and I think that idea really tore Frigga up inside. She doesn’t want to lose her children.

But the thing is that like... I still don’t think Loki was really open with Frigga about most things. I don’t think he told her everything, like some people kind of see it.

I think that sometimes Loki would start to confess something - confess that Odin makes him feel devalued, or that Thor has disrespected him, or something like that, and Frigga would be totally sympathetic, would do her best to comfort him... But would kind of imply that a) Thor & Odin love Loki, and anything they do should be forgiven because they love him, and b) that it’s kind of Loki’s own responsibility to deal with his feelings, because Odin and Thor just Don’t Get It, and they never will.

And it’s not something Frigga means as a nasty thing, I don’t think. She’s just trying to let Loki be as happy as he can be, whilst still remaining in Asgard. 

So by no means do I consider Frigga infallible. 

I think that Loki worships her, and would accept no criticism of her whatsoever, but she’s done just as much damage to him as Odin has. 

[dictionarywrites]

How do you think Loki’s first leaving Asgard excursion went? Like Loki finding out about life that is different or even accepting of him. I really like the idea of Olympians just being another realm that Asgardians can visit and that being a culture shock to Loki. Like Loki and Thor are sent to different realms as a coming of age adventure. Idk I’m just a fan of personal growth (that’s why all of ur BTJ make me cry tbh)

So Mount Olympus is another realm - it’s a pocket dimension that comes away from Earth, and it’s open-ended on the other side. Much like Asgard, it’s a kind of disc of land amidst a sea of stars, and it actually is canon that Asgardians and Olympians would like, meet and know one another. In the comics, Thor really looks up to Zeus et cetera. 

But yeah, like, I definitely think that as a child, going elsewhere with his family would be... Very exciting for him. Exciting, and relieving. Going to these foreign places like Nidavellir or Alfheim or Vanaheim, where no one really knew him at a glance. Sure, people would greet “the Asgardian prince,” but they wouldn’t know who he was when he inevitably ran off on his own.

And Olympus would be something else entirely. I definitely see Loki as having such a great affection for their whole deal, honestly - the idea of justice between the Norse myth and the Greek one is like... So different. And don’t get me wrong, it isn’t just that the Greeks don’t value sneakiness, because they absolutely do, but there’s this kind of like, understanding of the separation between man and godliness. That some men have a little of both, but that it changes them, and that change isn’t merely an elevation, but a separation, a distancing - it’s super cool, you know.

But yeah, I can imagine Loki getting upset a handful of times as a relatively young kid and just going off to Olympus. Even as a natural shapeshifter, everyone would know exactly who he was, but I can imagine a lot of them really indulging him, and people indulging him wouldn’t ever be something Loki was used to, and subsequently would be something he’d really be touched by and look on with great affection.

Because of the different like... Lens they view things through, I don’t think they’d distrust Loki’s magic at all, and honestly, most of the Olympians would probably encourage it. 

Like, I genuinely do think Loki would just hang off Hephaestus’ shoulder at every available moment, and I think Aphrodite would delight in any boy that genuinely looked at her husband and went “the best”. I think he’d have a super healthy relationship with Dionysus, who Loki would feel a very natural connection with - Hermes... Less so. I really do think that Hermes and Loki would really rub each other the wrong way, despite each being tricksters in their own right, and I can imagine them just wanting to tear one another apart. 

But Hermes & Loki undoubtedly consider themselves “brothers” in the sense that they are The Same, their dominant facet being their chaotic lilt, and I do think this would extend to other tricksters like Ananse. 

And then, Hades. Firstly, I think Persephone and Loki would genuinely get on. I tend to write Persephone as having made her choice with a careful intention, and write Hades as confused and slightly over-respectful, where Hades is a little more stiff, cold, and manners-focused than he means to be; in comparison, Persephone is warm and free and easy. And like... Persephone is very aware of those that come from a place where they should feel like they belong, where everything should fit, and it just doesn’t. Instead of feeling at home, you feel stifled. 

And Hades, for his part, knows precisely what it is to serve your purpose, to do as you ought, and to serve your duty... And kinda have everyone hate you. I love him because he’s just so focused on duty and law that it’s very difficult for him to see outside of those very specific tracks, and it’s only extremely rarely that he can be convinced to look outside them.

While Loki is ever flexible, he also has a super complex relationship with duty, and what duty is, and I think that Loki genuinely feels a very strong sense of duty to a lot of things, which in BTJ is absolutely shattered. He’s always felt a duty to Asgard, but now? Asgard can burn, and it won’t matter to him at all. His duty is to his family, first and foremost, and the duty of destiny is cast to the wind. 

So yeah, like... I think because of the general issues with his esteem, Loki would want to go somewhere he wasn’t known, at all. And Olympus, he’d be known at a glance no matter what skin he tried to wear, and he’d adore that on some level but like-- It wouldn’t really be enough, you know? He’d never be one of them, and I think that would make him keep his distance a little, just because he knows the pleasantry of the occasion would only feel more bittersweet in the end.