Beautiful. Off the top of my head: Spoiler: noncon/suicide mention This is also reminding me of the one Fuck Or Die fic I've read where the characters, upon learning of the situation, immediately and mutually opted for "Die". Still good.
On a related note, I really want someone, somewhere, someday to write a sex pollen fic where sex pollen is just a known hazard of the area and the whole fic is just the cast bickering about which two people are going to have to take one for the team. Best idea I had for the fandom was FFX, and Yuna is going "I must do it myself because it's the summoner's duty to face danger for the people of Spira!" but actually she just doesn't want to die a virgin and this is a Seymour-free opportunity to fix this, and Tidus has absolutely no idea what they're actually talking about and nobody quite realizes this for slightly too long. Kimahri anticlimactically kills the sex pollen Ochu with Jump while everyone is arguing.
This one! Tales of Symphonia. Kratos/Zelos, appropriately. Spoiler: ToS spoilers If you're not familiar with Tales of Symphonia, these are two self-loathing, suicidal people who really do not like each other at all. So... reasonable.
i saw that the other day and i fuckin love it, partly because it’s hilarious, partly because it explains the weird lack of an actual Raphael in the GO universe
Raphael falling and becoming Crowley isn't theologically plausible anyway, Raphael shows up as an unfallen messenger-of-God type angel in the Book of Tobit, carrying messages to humans and everything. I can get behind the "Oh, haven't you heard?" interpretation though, that's totally Crowley covering for Aziraphale who is supposed to carry the message.
Plus if word ever gets to other angels about the angel raphael, they'll just assume some humans got aziraphale's name wrong!
On the subject of Good Omens: Crowley is not bad at his job. Crowley is probably better at his job than Hastur and Ligur. He doesn't do things like tie up all the phones in London for an hour at lunch because he's so bad at being evil that he can't bring himself to do anything more than obnoxious pranks, it's because he's figured out that for the same amount of time and effort that orchestrating the dramatic fall of one paragon would take, he can make millions of people be horrible to each other. Yeah, it's funny evil, but that doesn't make it any less effective. (Aziraphale, on the other hand, shows every indication of being bad at his job.)
it's made pretty explicit in the book that it's more effective! with the trickle-down effect, as all those people who had bad days take it out on others and spread the misery around, you end up with lots more net evil in the world. Hastur and Ligur are craftsmen, expertly corrupting individual souls, but Crowley just gets the numbers.
yeah! Crowley puts a lot of time, effort, and creativity into his job. by contrast, we barely see Aziraphale do anything at all. he lights a traffic cop’s notebook on fire, he Heals This Bike... I remember in the paragraph where the Arrangement was introduced, we learn he was responsible for Shropshire and a couple other locations. but those are the only times I recall hearing about him doing work in his capacity as an angel. no M25 or mobile networks for him, he just sits at home collecting books.
I also noted something re: Crowley destroying anti-homeless nuisances, which... honestly, they sounds like they're something he'd come up with. It's also not entirely clear what exactly an angel's job actually is, let alone if any are actually good at it. Also... do we actually know if there are human souls sent to hell? Or Heaven? Or that it can be even sort of influenced? (Obviously, the eternal fate of each soul is determined at the moment of creation, as there is no such thing as free will in Good Omens, but it is their fate determined by their actions actions, or their actions determined by their destined fate)
Going through my Harry Potter tag again and am laughing at a comment about the infamous Hogwarts Exposed, specifically the sporkers' sheer indignance over the fact that it featured the entire Hogwarts staff being outwitted by Crabbe and Goyle.
Current gripe: jerks with a heart of gold being written with an incorrect jerk/heart ratio. This applies to a lot of characters but my current target is Reigen Arataka Spoiler: Unnecessary Details Don't get me wrong, I adore Reigen, and he definitely has his moments. But like between the Separation Arc and shipping him wildly with Serizawa I think that people forgot that he is at least fourty percent weasel.
dear ficcers: aid means help aide is a person whose job is helping if you tell someone “i require your aide” it means you need to borrow their assistant ok? got it? good. ps it’s always been mail, maille is ye olde englyshe, it’s as fake as renfair jousts but not as fun