With a permanent livejournal account, and a twitter account, a whole slew of domain names of my own, and the technical savvy to pound out a blogging system from scratch in a couple of minutes, do I really need another one of these?
It makes so much more sense why he’s somewhat obsessed with space when you realise he helped to build it.
Demons have no place in creation. When he says “I helped build that one,” he’s remembering his life Before. It meant so much to him. Being an angel meant so much to him, and he’s still absolutely devastated that he isn’t one anymore. He’s so Loud about it.
He’s the one puts forward the Arrangement that will allow him to perform holy miracles and blessings again.
He’s the one who decorates his apartment so that it looks as little like the crowded, messy, dirty Hell as possible.
He’s the one who recreates his own little Eden within that apartment, where he can play God and relive his trauma over and over again with himself in the position of power, rejecting any and all of his subjects deemed not to be worthy, without mercy. Because that’s how he sees the Almighty.
He’s the one who is so utterly convinced that God is not listening, because why would he believe they would? He’s been wrestling with his Fall and regret for 6 millenia and God has never come to help him.
He’s the one who insists on the idea that Adam can be reshaped through the power of Influence (read nurture over nature) because that means we always have the power to change and evolve, something he needs to believe in desperately. (Something he turns out to be right about btw).
And his obsession with space, this is the big one. The one aspect of Creation we know he had a part in. When he wants to escape it’s the first and only place he thinks of. Not Heaven, with it’s corporate charity, not Hell, where he never belonged. Space. Among the stars. Where he once walked as he does in his apartment surrounded by floating pages, a dull imitation of the real thing. Among the stars he helped create, where he could forget, and pretend he was an angel once more, surrounded by light.
Aziraphale threatened by Crowley vs threatened by Uriel
I love this contrast because even right when Crowley first grabs him he never looks scared, not even for a moment. With the angels though he’s terrified before they even touch him. Despite all his talk of ‘opposite sides’ it’s pretty clear through his actions who he trusts, and who he doesn’t.
‘Oh, yeah,’ moaned Gaspode. 'Yeah, you’ll bite me. Aaargh. Oh, yes, that’ll really worry me, that will. I mean, think about it. I’ve got so many dog diseases I’m only alive 'cos the little buggers are too busy fighting among 'emselves. I mean, I’ve even got Licky End, and you only get that if you’re a pregnant sheep. Go on. Bite me. Change my life. Every time there’s a full moon, suddenly I grow hair and yellow teeth and have to go around on all fours. Yes, I can see that making a big difference to my ongoing situation. Actually,’ he said, 'I’m definitely on a losing streak in the hair department, so maybe a, you know, not the whole bite, maybe just a nibble—’
“Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, as Vetinari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth. As a result, although Ankh-Morpork still had many enemies, those enemies had to finance their armies with borrowed money. Most of it was borrowed from Ankh-Morpork, at punitive interest. There hadn’t been any really big wars for years. Ankh-Morpork had made them unprofitable. Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: ‘Do not fight, or we will kill you.’ The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: ‘If you fight, we’ll call in your mortagages. And incidentally, that’s MY pike you’re pointing at me. I paid for that shield you’re holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.’”
“There is always hope. And there must be hope. To abandon hope is to escape part of the punishment. One must hope in order for hope to be destroyed. One must trust in order to feel the anguish of betrayal. One must yearn, or one cannot feel the pain of rejection, and one must love in order to feel the agony of witnessing the loved one suffer excruciation. But above all one must hope. There must be hope or otherwise how can it be satisfyingly dashed? The certainty of hopelessness might become a comfort; the uncertainty, the not-knowing, that is what helps to bring on true despair. The tormented cannot be allowed to abandon themselves to their fate. That is insufficient.”
Surface Detail, Iain M. Banks
Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers.
“People kept on talking about the true king of Ankh-Morpork, but history taught a cruel lesson. It said–often in words of blood–that the true king was the one who got crowned.”
“It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: ‘Kings. What a good idea.’ Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”
“Igneous, despite giving the appearance of not being able to count beyond ten without ripping off someone else’s arm, and having an intimate involvement in the city’s complex hierarchy of crime, was known to pay his bills. If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.”
