Heaven's not there just to be anti-Hell. If they were half as benevolent as they claimed to be, they'd have angels out doing things to help people avoid being permanently damned because they believed in Christ and weren't perfect enough for the Silver City. Instead they're... what are they doing, exactly? Who knows. Whatever it is, they're not helping a situation that inherently favors Hell and puts people in eternal torment for disproportionate reasons. Like, maybe Hitler deserves eternal torment. Maybe. But most of the souls in Hell don't. And Heaven has proceeded to do nothing about this state of affairs for centuries. Again, if they believe even half of their own press, the correct solution to this state of affairs is to do literally anything except ignore it, but look at what they've actually done about it.
As for summoning the angel, you may be correct, but even then, all that does is establish that you don't call on angels unless you have a damn good reason, and note that nobody knows what even counts as a damn good reason because for people who invested a lot of effort into early-day humanity, they've had next to no communication with them since Christ walked the Earth.
I don't know who he intended to get, but he clearly had someone who he knew could do the job.
I mean, how much wiggle room is there here? She clearly isn't associated with Hell (which would be the better choice for getting souls for nefarious purposes), and while the Greek pantheon is less than moral they usually save any creative tormenting of souls for people who deserved it, and those people wouldn't be in the Silver City. So... what threat could Thana have possibly posed? What could she have done with one of their souls that she couldn't have done far more easily with a damned soul? It's clearly disproportionate, because no matter how you slice it, Thana didn't do anything burn-worthy. And, hell, if trying to contact Heaven was what the problem was, how did they expect Thana to know she wasn't allowed to do that, seeing as they haven't talked to anyone about that in centuries?
At least we agree on this much. It's much better than the last multipage argument I had on this topic.
Eh, I'm not really looking at Heaven as benevolent per se? More like a neglectful parent who's sort of around but doesn't do much of anything but might step in if the situation gets bad enough.
And Hell always seemed wonky but I wrote it off as the equivalent of religious superstition built up to scare people into staying in line—because the idea of someone willingly inflating Hell's numbers as you slowly progress to Armageddon where the armies of Heaven and Hell clash always seemed kind of well, dumb.
Thanks for that quote by the way, specific details tend to fall to the wayside—though I'll have to go looking for the conversations with Matthias from back then because I'm still not remembering a specific conversation they had about that; maybe the IHOP one? It does put the idea of contacting Heaven out of the running though and makes what seemed like a strange leap in logic more understandable.
I'm just struggling to think of anyone he's met or interacted with that had the ability to open a portal to Hell but I suppose some minor DC character exhibited the ability at some point.
Oh, while I'm refusing to completely accept Thana's telling of the events as truth I'm not gonna say burning wasn't a bit much. But this is the same Heaven that turned Lot's wife to a pillar of salt or stone for looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah getting blasted. The same Heaven who decided the best way to support Moses' plea for the Israelites to be set free was nationwide plagues. Excessive and overblown responses was kind of their thing, at least in the Old Testament. So I kind of expect it from them I guess? Which is a bit depressing I suppose. Though that makes me wonder when she made the attempt—cue someone finding an exact quote.
All signs point to the Silver City
not hunkering down on Hell just because one Hellenist asks them to. After all, people pray for them to do it every day - a number that most assuredly increased after the Fawcett City incident - and any one that already possesses the knowledge and ability to contact Heaven directly has probably already tried themselves.
Blaze is being hunted by her brother. I couldn't tell you why exactly that is, but
she did agree to ally with the League to fight back against her brother.
I'm not quite sure what you mean with the hunkering down bit, I was replying to someone saying that Paul's plan was to try to leave traces of demon magic behind in an attempt to get Heaven to attack Hell. I was saying that said plan required Paul not to then immediately use the able, allowing it out of the range of his wards and making it trackable.
The dialogue was to poke fun at the idea that the forces of Heaven would see the demon magic, start gearing up, see the pomegranate reappear in the middle of a human city, and then still invade Hell.
Oh, you're saying Paul trying to contact them wouldn't work—oh sure most likely not. I was just concerned that an attempt wasn't made—though that was addressed by another poster.
And opposing Satanus is all well and good (and honestly expected at this point) but it doesn't really do much to stop the industrialization of Hell that he's got going.
Someone stated that having Blaze angel up would make her a counter to her brother, but to apply that counter (and stop the industrialization everyone's worried about) they'd need to go after Satanus who's hardly gonna show up on Earth spoiling for a fight. So they'd need to invade Hell in general and whatever stronghold Satanus has in particular to kill him (assuming his death would stop the industrialization of course).
Hell is pretty magic based in combat, and magic is a pretty big weakness of Lanterns, if Paul is anything to go by. Even if everyone has spell eaters, I still seriously doubt a few OLC members could do it.
If Paul could easily conquer hell, he'd have done it already.
Then I feel deeply deceived by the many people crying foul when he didn't reduce Hell to ash during his visit.
Harrumph
