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?
this is still so funny
I have very conflicted feelings about Jean Vicquemare but I think this sums it up pretty well
Update: I did a very chaotic run (not trying to be an asshole but also doing all the drugs all at once) and Kim is angelically patient. But you still get moments like these:
And it took all I had not to immediately turn this whole playthrough around. One day my little completionist heart might want to do the fascist vision vision quest but I don't know if I have it in me. I want to do Kim simp run now.
BUT I also put a lot of point in Physique which means I got to see more of Shivers and other dialogue options. Some of my favorites:
You get more occasions to see people comment on your different situationships.
I did the ultraliberal quest and it's darkly funny to me that I sometimes wondered which dialogue option was the ultraliberal and which one was the fascist.
I also wanted to see the ending if you finish the game with Cuno, so I didn't try to warn Kim at the tribunal. I feel like a traitor. Since I have finished the game with Kim before, I knew what he would have said and having Cuno not knowing what you're talking about (or not fucking caring, 'cause Cuno Doesn't Fucking Care) was TORTURE. Esprit de Corps also interjects with vision of what Kim is doing. Just to hurt me, I think. The worst one, in my opinion, is that you can't get a picture of the phasmid and get this instead.
But a legendary Half-light check let me convince Kim to wear the jacket, so I guess it was all worth it in the end.
Help I want to do a different playthrough of Disco Elysium but I am afraid of disappointing Kim.
shout out to all the christians on radio stations who are going to play a very jewish song about kinky breakup sex as a misguided homage to the now-dead pope today. leonard cohen's ghost is shaking his head at you and so am i
My cartoon for this week’s New Scientist
Listening to these people talking themselves into doing the one thing they've been warned not to do is HILARIOUS. Well, maybe we SHOULD go down Copland Road...
So, Gabriel Attal somehow took a clear-ish position against the far-right. Truly, we live in an age of miracles.
The Prime Minister said that not one vote should go to the RN. In circonscriptions where their candidate is third, they should quit in favor of "another candidate who, like us, defends the values of the Republic".
This is, overall, good news. The government has managed to talk about the far-right without making any references to what they call the far-left. What worries me is that they haven't clearly said that any NFP candidate is a better choice than an RN candidate.
Candidates have until Tuesday to confirm their candidacy. I truly hope that everyone will keep it together for a week, eat crows and desist when necessary, and that on Sunday we will achieve the best result possible, which is mediocre.
Mediocre is better than far-right. Many can survive mediocre who couldn't survive far-right. Final verdict is next Sunday, and until then, everyone, good luck and goodnight.
So while we wait to see how low we've slid on this slippery slope, I thought I'd give a primer on how legislative elections work in France.
The first thing to know is that it's more like 577 local elections. In order to be elected, a candidate has to win in the circonscription in which they were campaigning.
The second thing to know is that in order to win on the first round of the election, a candidate must have at least 50% of the votes AND 25% of those registered. This means that if, as has happened in La Martinique, a candidate has 63% of the votes but the turn-out was low (estimated around 25%, which is low but higher than it was in the last election), they still get a second round.
Now, for the second round. Are qualified 1. The candidate who had the most votes and 2. Any candidate that had 12,5% of those registered to vote. Once again, this means that the turn-out is a factor in who gets to participate in the second round. It also means that it is possible for a second round to have a "triangulaire", that is to say 3 candidates in the second round (technically, it means that it's possible to have four candidates).
At time of writing, it is estimated that between 65 and 85 representatives have been elected on the first round, and that there will be between 285 and 315 triangulaires (based on the data given by Le Monde, which is based on Ipsos data). Out of 577 seats. This means that in a lot of circonscriptions, there will most probably be one RN candidate, one NFP candidate and one candidate from the presidential party.
On the left, several political leaders have already announced that if their candidates arrived third and a RN candidate was qualified for the second round, they would give up the election and encourage people to vote for whoever else was qualified.
And now the big question: will the presidential party do the same? Gabriel Attal, the Prime Minister, is expected to talk to the press tonight. I, personally, will be drinking and obsessively refreshing the news page.
oh to be a pup being painted - by William Henry Hamilton Trood (1848-1899).
The insanity of French politics in the last few days is re-kindling a deeply buried instinct to start a podcast.