[ SECRET POST #4564 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4564 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



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02.
[Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night]


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03.


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04.


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05.


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06.
[Claw/Treasure Planet/Puss in Boots]


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07.
[Yami no Matsuei/Descendants of Darkness]


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08. [SPOILERS for Avengers Endgame]


















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #653.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/Ck4F6zZ.png

[ninety6tears]

I've been there with book fandoms : / And it's annoying as hell when people start slapping both the book and show tags onto their fics when the story treatments aren't close enough to be interchangeable (I don't remember the GO novel well enough to agree or disagree that that's the case here).

[(Anonymous)]

I know how you feel, OP! I loved the show but TV Aziraphale is so different from Book Aziraphale-- he's not as bright, he's a lot further behind in his journey towards independent thought, and he's not as empathetic.

(I mostly write book-based fic still, though I've explored a couple show things)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad someone else feels this way about the difference between the two versions.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmmm. I've only seen the first couple episodes but Aziraphale doesn't strike me as dim at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Came here to say this. I mean, I could see the argument that he's pretending to be dim to avoid conversations he doesn't want to have.

I don't know, there's a sort of tendency to see good-hearted, well-meaning people who enjoy little pleasures as stupid, and that might be playing a role here.

[(Anonymous)]

This is what I thought, too... which is ironic, because the book makes a point of saying that's exactly Aziraphale's thing. I'm not really seeing examples of the miniseries!Aziraphale being dim witted at all? He's gentle, kind, easily flustered and non-confrontational. Arguably feminine-coded. I'd hate to think people see all that and think "stupid" but yeah, a lot of people think that way.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I saw him as just being really hesitant to go against what he thought heaven wanted and also maybe too easily trusting of humans (see: Nazi secret agents), but he was the first to figure out there must have been a mix-up with another baby and that the Great Plan may not be the Ineffable Plan.

[(Anonymous)]

Dim in comparison to the book, where it's outright stated that the first impression people consistently form of Aziraphale is "English, intelligent, and gay". TV Aziraphale only ticks two out of three.

I don't know if you've seen episode 3, but Aziraphale keeps getting into stupid trouble that Crowley has to bail him out of. And in the book he studies Agnes' prophecies for days, making notes so complex that only a handful of humans alive could understand them, but in the TV version he finds one prophecy that practically hands the answer to him. These sort of things make him appear not as bright in the show as he is in the book.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not like Crowley doesn't do stupid things.

That last one sounds more like a "this is a change we had to make because we don't have time to include fascinating montages of note-taking" rather than a "hur hur Aziraphale is a dummy head" thing.

[(Anonymous)]

It probably was changed for time or other legitimate TV show reasons and not because they wanted to make Aziraphale look like an idiot who couldn't have done it the hard way, but it's about what you show vs. what you don't show. The end result is that the TV version of the character isn't shown doing anything that takes any particular intelligence. It doesn't make TV Aziraphale an idiot, but it also doesn't establish him as smart, and a lot of fans who only saw the show assume, not unfairly, that he's nothing special in the brains department.

For comparison, consider the dove resurrection scene: in the book, it's one of Crowley's least demonic moments and serves to show that spark of goodness in him that Aziraphale talks about. In the show it was changed for scene blocking reasons to Aziraphale resurrecting the dove, and the original function was lost, save for the "it's late" joke. Now, Crowley has other moments of kindness, so that side of him still comes across. But based on what is shown you can't say for certain that TV Crowley would have been inclined to resurrect the dove at all. It's fair to assume he would have based on meta reasons, but equally fair to assume he didn't care based on what is actually on the screen.

[(Anonymous)]

Aziraphale keeps getting into stupid trouble that Crowley has to bail him out of

I like the theory that Aziraphale does it half on purpose so Crowley will show up. Look at how he gets Crowley to clean the stain off his coat.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think he's dim-- naive and a bit scattered, yes; stupid, no. But I don't think he's AS smart as his book counterpart. He's still my favorite character, but in choosing what to emphasize and what would work best in a different medium, I just think some of his intelligence was sacrificed.

(One of the things I love about him is that even in the book, Aziraphale is naive, too-trusting, and scatterbrained enough that I'm sure all the other angels had no trouble believing he just set his sword down and couldn't find it again-- and that none of those things undercut his high intelligence.)

[(Anonymous)]

This! I also hate that people tag their tv show fic with the book tag.