archangel ween

Here she is among the employees listening to the paintball announcement, she's behind Newt and the guy talking

And here she is again in the same place as the power goes out:

But here she is outside walking into the building as Newt is leaving after being fired

I've always thought that seeing the fly enter the box was meant to signal to us that Gabriel was not carrying the fly in the box, therefore the box may have contained something else. Did the something else get absorbed by the fly (which is a container)?

It does imply that the box was not carrying the fly. I don't think he loses his memory until after a time in the elevator--eyes appear to still be purple on the CC. The CC shows him struggling to turn the box over to write on the bottom, then the next shows it as if it's light, then we see him at the elevator where he takes the matchbox out of it and it's still heavy through the end of the CC.

No exactly, but it could lead him there. Have you read the metas from @vidavalor that has written some about Gabriel, and his personal friendship with Azi and the knowledge that he has about the relationship between Crowley and Azi And the protection that he has given them thru the ages. The fly is also in one of those metas, are very really interesting

Yeah Gabriel is acting a part he does not want to play, just like Crowley and Az must. He's known about them, and frankly I think he's always trying to avoid "doing his heavenly duty" aka taking action against anyone for sin. We see him playing the idiot in the Job flashback....so that he can let the kids live. The only time we see him actually angry is when he's got to obliterate Az at the end of s1, because he can no longer weasel out of having to mete out "justice". He is angry because he does not want to kill Az, but he has no choice.

He has to trumpet the party line but he does not believe in it. If he does not know about it then he need not do anything.

So if all his Gabriel-ness is in the fly, I think that fly literally has a mind of its own, just as Jim has a different mind of his own. Jim isn't just a body, he's the factory reset, he does have a mind of his own but I think angels were originally created to be trusting and to obey. Part of the point of god's game is to see if they can defy their programming. She literally set them up to fail, and wants to see if the impossible is possible: being someone else. Because if you are created to obey, can you defy that? Does that make you a different person, because that's what "sinner" as an epithet is, that's what eternal damnation means? Kicker is, if angels were originally created as trusting, god has already made them defy their programming: can you take an innocent person and make them participate in evil? What does it take to corrupt someone, so that they actually think their actions are still just? And then of course, can you do it again in the other direction?

First came the corruption, the quite literal original sin, of putting obedience over morality and labeling that a "higher calling", the "greater good". Then comes the ironic redemption: can you defy your obedience programming and learn to trust yourself over others? Trust in who you are and what you believe?

Which is all to say: yeah, the fly led him to Aziraphale, because the fly IS Gabriel. Jim followed the fly because he's a factory reset angel at that point, built to trust and obey, aka blindly follow orders. An actual "innocent baby".

Gabriel isn't split in S2, I don't think. Not really. His memories are blocked, not erased. The Fly is... I think it's like... think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself. The trauma of what happens blocks his memories. I don't actually think he got amnesia from putting his memories in The Fly; I think he got it from what happened to him. His behavior during the week is consistent with trauma-induced retrograde amnesia. Basically, his mind sought to protect itself so it threw up a wall around everything traumatic and kept him from being able to access that information, even thought it was still there. Gabriel's trauma was all-encompassing so it took his whole identity away as to remember that would be to remember what happened.

Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like. His anxiety spikes when the angels are there because there is a part of his mind that knows who they are and he is freaking out because they tried to kill him and are now in his safe space. It just won't tell the rest of his mind why he feels anxious around them because that would be to remember the trauma and he can't. He is calmer around Crowley and Aziraphale, whom he went to instinctively because his mind knows that they are safe. His mind won't let him remember who they are because to do that would be to remember angels and demons and things associated with his trauma but it lets him recall the way to the bookshop because that's the place to go to be safe.

We see that he can have memories without context long before The Fly gives him back his memories in full. He knows "Everyday" and there's a suggestion he recognized Crowley as Bildad the Shuite without the Heaven/Hell context of it during the miracle to keep him safe. When he's talking with Crowley later in the season and feels comfortable, he remembers more-- the matchbox and even a bit of the trauma for the first time with the "institutional problem." All of this was in Gabriel's mind all season before he opened The Fly. He just couldn't access it but not because he didn't have The Fly-- because his mind was protecting him.

God is the one who tells us that she's playing an ineffable game of her own devising. She calls herself a dealer who won't tell you the rules, etc. That's called horror. And she's clearly amused by it. God is an actual demon by nature, as opposed to the other demons who are forced into terrorizing people.

>What if anything that's happening is the fault of The Metatron-- an evil angel telling everyone that he speaks for God when he really can do no such thing?

I think the Metatron is indeed Lucifer, but that's because Jesus is a horror just like god herself, and he and Lucy swapped places after the fall. Just like A&C have been swapping places, playing for the other team. Literally and figuratively. Because Jesus is a horror who loves running hell and Lucifer is the "good guy". Lucifer played Jesus on earth, he's the one who died on the cross. The Satan we saw in s1 was Jesus putting on airs.

>God can do nothing about any of it because if She intervenes, She's robbing all of Her creations of free will. If even one of them doesn't have it, none of them do.

This is the problem of evil. We have seen that standing by and doing nothing is treated as immoral. Futzing around worrying about the consequences to yourself or burbling about how to justify it does not excuse inaction. If the worst of the demons would intervene to help people, and god would not, then the worst of the demons is infinitely morally superior to god.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

Much as any other game we ourselves play, much as any other fictional story we tell about serial killers and chainsaw murderers....she set up the rules. She set up the game. Fictionally enjoying a chainsaw massacre is fine, because it's not real. As we have explicitly been told, these are real people and you can't treat them like blorbos. Which circles back around to the nature vs nurture, the "rules are reality"....

>Or, God didn't actually program anybody. What if God loves Her creations and gave them free will and dominion over their universe?

I said "program" specifically because that's what rules=reality is. Does it matter if you innately create someone who is unable to obey, vs telling a completely naive person that they can't disobey? It's what we do to children: expect them to obey, hit them when they don't, regardless of who's in the right because children have zero ability to judge for themselves or to fight back. Indeed, "fighting back" is punished by being hit more. Simply "talking back", even when the child is in the right, is punished. You cannot question anything, because that's called disobedience, disloyalty, treason--that's the fall.

Might does not make right. Rules are not reality. But that's what we teach, and that's what people do not question....because questioning reality is treason. Change is not possible. Might makes right means that what the mightiest wants, she gets, and that's what makes reality. You can't change that until.....you have your own house and make your own rules, which isn't actually changing the status quo at all because now you're the embodiment of might makes right.

Tons of feudal fiefs mean you are the king in your domain, and you don't change a single thing about how stuff works that makes you king. Because the rules were already established, that nobody can question those above them.....so as much as you tell yourself you created Eden for your underlings, if they can't leave, if they believe they aren't allowed to question anything---that's not all the different than every other fief lord. How are your underlings to know you won't hurt them just like everyone else would for being treasonous? That's literally what "god is testing me" means. None of them respond with "she's evil and this is wrong". Because loyalty tests, shit tests, are considered perfectly fine, because might makes right and we can't question her. So....obviously.....anything god does is the highest of morality and she deserves to be abusive, because dontchasee it's not actually abuse, you deserve it. Just like Job.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

That's the ineffable game. Will anyone throw caution to the wind and break the system? It's great entertainment. Tell people it's impossible, because you made the rules like that, and then see if people will cause an apocalypse--that's what upending the system IS--to.....just to talk to you.

So yeah, god is cheering on her own chainsaw massacre victims. She's got the chainsaw. Just like we cheer on fictional people in horror movies, but listen, they're not real, and we created that story. We are the fictional serial killer. God did the same thing....except with real people. She created a horror game with real people, she's the one chasing them down to kill them. She will not stop, she will go ahead and kill them. She's the knife at Issac's throat, but this time she does not tell Abraham to stop.

Under might makes right and the rules are reality, that means everything that happens to you because you can't stop god--and no one can stop her--is your fault and you deserve it. Like Job said. If you do not fight back, if you do not win, you deserve it, and it's not abuse, it's "edification", suffering makes you a saint. If you're not a saint, then clearly you just need to suffer more.

>God never says there's an Ineffable Plan-- She says there's an Ineffable Game. A game means everyone has free will & is making their own choices. It's Heaven that's trying to tell everyone that they're doing the will of God but God herself is saying go live free so that's why I trust Her more than The Metatron. :) I know, there's so many theories-- it's great fun!

But rules are reality, might makes right, and so anything god says is treated as immutable reality. We see this a lot in Star Trek with the "vulcans never lie/you lied/no, I implied or made an error". Except god does lie, because she told everyone she doesn't--that's what "don't question me" means: she is never wrong. Which is a lie.

God wrote the Great Plan. With the intent that it be carried out. To see how people act--again, she's the chainsaw serial killer. It is not mercy if she does not kill you, it's just serial killer behavior. Mercy requires that you believe you deserve to die, that she's right to torture people. She told people that the plan is reality, deliberately deceiving people.

Who has free will when you're told something is immutable reality? When the rules say it's not, and rules are reality? Unless you want to die--and nobody ever chooses death, do they? so predictable--you cannot fight. Nothing changes. You can't do anything. Because you will get caught, god will know because she said she has omniscience, you can't get away with it, you can't overthrow god under might makes right. Fighting immutable reality means you die, means you deserved eternal torture. Means you were wrong to do it.

And again, if everyone has free will and these are real people, what does it say about god that she sits back and allows all this? Deliberately deceives them and does not correct them? Is she just too stupid to understand that's what she's doing? We don't even tolerate that from toddlers. She cannot be both that stupid and omniscient. She also cannot be called benevolent. It's outright neglect. Toddlers also have "free will" but if your parents go "oh well, he's drinking bleach, freeeee willllll" that is called abuse through neglect and you lose custody. If god is lord our father, then at the very least hold her to the standards we expect of even the most incompetent parents.

>The Fly is… I think it's like… think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself [...] Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like.

It is a depiction of trauma, yes, but the reason isn't "this is ptsd" in universe. If you take files off a computer, you can still access them if you go get the external drive. The fly is a container, storage, and he can access that with great effort. But his head isn't built for that anymore--you can't just plug in any drive and expect it to work, a floppy disk doesn't fit into modern computers. You can still get the info off it with great effort, but it'll be corrupt. You have to access it correctly or you lose everything. Doing it with great effort results in partial or corrupt access.

He could have also chosen which memories to keep, which to shunt to the fly. He didn't keep "all the angels shouting for joy", he seems to have only kept his song. Factory reset, with a few exceptions. Wipe the drive. Except the fly isn't actually a computer so having "leaks", or the fly/aka Gabriel choosing to back port some more info can happen.

Gabriel is a stand in for Christ this season (the role swaps around, but mostly it's him). In the bookshop attack, it's the harrowing of hell; when Christ died, his body didn't go to hell but his spirit did. That's the split: it's why the demons reject Gabriel (not literally, metaphorically) and it's why Crowley is the one who saves the people and goes up to heaven. Jim is the body, the fly/Gabriel is the soul, and Crowley is the divinity.

I think that's also why Jim tries to kill the fly. They are not completely separate things; what your body does affects your soul, vice versa. If you kill your soul, you get to live free of sin when it goes to hell and you stay behind. But giving that up means you don't know who you are, you live in ignorance. Ignorance is bliss only if what you don't know doesn't affect you. What you don't know can still kill you, as with the dealer won't tell you the rules or even let you see at all.

>And FYI-- I'm really excited to find someone else who also thinks that Gabriel knew Aziraphale was lying in the Job minisode and went along with it because he could get away with it since Crowley and Aziraphale had given him a way out of killing the kids. 😊

She's using tongue-in-cheek humor to describe free will. There is no Ineffable Plan-- there is an Ineffable Game. The Game of Life requires active participants who have free will. She can't tell them that they do or else they wouldn't actually have it, would they? So, it's something of a game. It's definitely not a plan. The game is everyone figuring out for themselves that there is no Ineffable Plan and that they have their own selves and own senses of morality to answer for. There's nothing horrific about it-- it's delightful, imo. She's verbally winking at the audience while describing it. It's the same sense of humor She shows throughout her narration. Ask why God is narrating Crowley & Aziraphale's story in the first place? She clearly loves them and wants them to be well. How do you square things like the nightingale ending of S1 with the idea that God is a villain?

<<I think the Metatron is indeed Lucifer, but that's because Jesus is a horror just like god herself, and he and Lucy swapped places after the fall. Just like A&C have been swapping places, playing for the other team. Literally and figuratively. Because Jesus is a horror who loves running hell and Lucifer is the "good guy". Lucifer played Jesus on earth, he's the one who died on the cross. The Satan we saw in s1 was Jesus putting on airs.>>

Respectfully, we're now at the 2/3rds mark of the show and if they wanted to lay the groundwork for something like what you're talking about, we'd have seen evidence for it already. I don't disagree that both Satan and The Metatron are evil. I think that's kind of the whole point-- the angels aren't all good and the demons aren't all evil. I hear what you're saying about an element of swap, though, in parallel, and perhaps I could tempt you with the theory I've written up in different ways in a couple of posts where the end of S2 is Aziraphale being tempted by Satan who is appearing as The Metatron because that's who can offer Aziraphale the job he thinks he needs to keep Crowley safe?

<<This is the problem of evil. We have seen that standing by and doing nothing is treated as immoral. Futzing around worrying about the consequences to yourself or burbling about how to justify it does not excuse inaction. If the worst of the demons would intervene to help people, and god would not, then the worst of the demons is infinitely morally superior to god.>>

To clarify: for any other being in The Universe, standing by and doing nothing would be morally indefensible. For God, standing by and doing nothing *is doing something* because She's the creator of everyone. She has the power to either make everyone do her bidding or to give them all free will. If She makes them all do her bidding, none of them are living free and She has enslaved all of her people. Why would She want to do that? She loves them. She wants them to live free but that's something that, as every adult knows, you've got to figure out for yourself. No one else can tell you how to live. If God were to intervene with even one person, she'd be suppressing that person's free will and, just by doing so, would be creating a sense of Ineffable Plan that She does not believe in because it robs all of Her creations of free will. If one of us is not free, none of us are free. God supports freedom so She lets us have dominion over the universe because it's ours, not hers. That's what allows her creations the ability to be free to be who they are. That's the only way God can love and She's doing it well, if you ask me.

<<That's the ineffable game. Will anyone throw caution to the wind and break the system? It's great entertainment. Tell people it's impossible, because you made the rules like that, and then see if people will cause an apocalypse--that's what upending the system IS--to.....just to talk to you.>>

She didn't make the rules-- the angels did. We make messes of our own devising. God isn't responsible for them-- we are. If we want out of them, we have to figure that way out ourselves. You might be feeling run down sometimes and always in the same daily round... you might find yourself stuck in traffic in the highway you created. It's up to you to blow up your halo, use your resources, lean on one another for support, and get yourself out of it. That's what the Ineffable Game is-- having free will to make your own choices and live your own life. God doesn't know if the world will come to an end. She doesn't know if Armageddon will happen because it hasn't played out yet. It's not up to Her whether or not it does. It's up to Her creations. The way to stop Armageddon is them figuring that out and She can't tell them or else she'd be exerting her will upon them and taking from them their learn and grow and be themselves and be free.

<<But rules are reality, might makes right, and so anything god says is treated as immutable reality.>>

Well, She's also the theatrical device known as a "voice of God"-- a disembodied, omniscient narrator who tells the audience everything they need to know to understand the universe of a play or a teleplay. She teaches us how to understand language and gives us all the information we might need to know about how Heaven and Hell works and She's funny as fuck so, yeah, I trust her. A lot more than that dude who showed up and said "I speak for God!" when we've never seen a shred of evidence that he actually can. 😉

<<God wrote the Great Plan. With the intent that it be carried out. To see how people act--again, she's the chainsaw serial killer.>>

Says who? There's no evidence there is a Great Plan and a ton of suggestion that there *isn't* one. No one can tell you what it says. Beez and Gabriel don't know what it is and when Crowley and Aziraphale realized that in one of the big moments of S1, they all got one step closer to figuring out this is all a sham. None of the main characters have ever been seen talking to God about it. I don't think Gabriel or The Metatron actually can talk to God. There's a floating head who claims to be running everything and is about to be all "I am the great and powerful Oz!" in S3. They're all about to find out that no one knows how to chat with Frances McDormand because God isn't in charge of Heaven-- they are. The angels are going to take back Heaven from The Metatron, the whole concept of being a demon is going to be a thing of the past, and they'll all have to work together to figure out what they want Heaven to look like going forward. God isn't the villain-- She's proud of the main characters who are finding their way towards a better world.

<< It is a depiction of trauma, yes, but the reason isn't "this is ptsd" in universe.>>

All due respect: yes, it is. The point of the series is that the angels and demons are like the humans and the humans are like the angels and demons. Crowley and Aziraphale's PTSD is an ongoing plot point. Aziraphale went to the spot where he lost Crowley in Edinburgh during S2 to work on his trauma. Crowley dealing with the bookshop fire is actually what saved the bookshop during the attack because of the fire extinguishers. Anxiety, depression, and PTSD and the effects of those things are very common things woven throughout the story for the supernatural characters in different ways because that's the point of the story. It's to talk about the business of living, which is all the same, no matter what type of fictional being we're talking about.

<<Gabriel is a stand in for Christ this season>>

He's a martyr, I'll give you that much lol. Gabriel could stand to go 30% less hard on "nice to meet you, do you want me to throw myself in front of an angry mob for you or could we do friendship bracelets?" That's a feature of trauma, btw. See: above.

<<In the bookshop attack, it's the harrowing of hell; when Christ died, his body didn't go to hell but his spirit did. That's the split: it's why the demons reject Gabriel (not literally, metaphorically)>>

The demons couldn't see Gabriel because he was protected from darkness by Beez, Crowley & Aziraphale. The idea here is that the bookshop attack is Aziraphale having a mental health crisis. The bookshop has always been metaphorical for Aziraphale-- to the point that he even makes it a sexual metaphor with Crowley as well. To this end, who can get into the bookshop, how, and to what extent, represents the voices to which Aziraphale is listening or open to listening to at any given time.

A group of demons attacking the bookshop-- led by a demon played by the same woman who played the person within whom Aziraphale shared a mind and body in S1-- is then symbolic of a worsening anxiety attack. The season peaks with Aziraphale having let in everyone in the neighborhood, plus having Maggie and Gabriel under the same roof, plus having a coming out party of sorts for him and Crowley, plus nine other stressors at once and so the demons representing Aziraphale's inner demons show up in the midst of it.

The Devil in Good Omens is really just darkness. It's Satan, yes, and demons, yes, but metaphorically, it's not really that religious. It can be inner demons. It can be depression, anxiety, trauma, negative thoughts. That's what's at the core of the bookshop attack, imo.

Crowley takes out most of the humans because they all represent different aspects of things we use to keep the darkness at bay. Maggie and Nina and Gabriel gather up and use the fire extinguishers that they have from Crowley's trauma to protect the shop. The demons can only be stopped by Aziraphale taking off his halo-- which is around his head, a tight band, not above his head, so it's mental health related to the horrible perfectionism of being forced to try to be a perfect angel all the time.

The demons can't see Gabriel because the darkness can't get to him anymore because he's been protected by Beez, Crowley and Aziraphale. It's showing how the characters can keep one another safe and how taking care of each other is the way we make sure that none of us are left behind to get caught by "The Devil." On Good Omens, a fall can be the darkness of a mental health breakdown that leads to the darkness of the literal Devil showing up at your door but, in real life, the same ideas apply in a secular way as well.

Frankly your "God is good" is the standard religious defense of the Christian god. GO is a satire of all that, it's laughing at how ridiculous "but it's moral to let people do evil" is, because there isn't a binary between treating people like dolls you should have total dominion over, and letting your child eat bleach. Control vs neglect; neither are moral choices, it's a false dichotomy. You can help people without dehumanizing them. We do it every day. Only a dictator would go "you're on your own if I can't control you, this is generous of me and good for you". Aka: if you need help, clearly you don't deserve autonomy, yeah? Clearly there is no other option.

You're supposed to think God is good. "Supposed to" and "it's true" are not the same thing. God is good is the rule, not reality. God said is a rule, like simon says, it's not reality. Might makes right again. Really weird how "I did this one less than decent thing" means humans are evil and deserve hell, but for god "I could have been worse" is incontrovertible evidence she's morally superior. Instead of the threat and confession it actually is. A promise not to drown everyone again isn't kind, it's deranged. You know what kind of person says shit like that?

Evil doesn't exist, it's a choice. It's every choice. A person is not capable of being only good or only evil, that's what shades of gray is. Every choice can be different. God herself is not an exception, she too chooses. And she lies about it.

GO is a satire. They aren't going to skewer every other part of religion but then turn around and go "except god, she's impeccable". God is the entire basis of the religion, it's not exempt. It does not get special treatment. Only religion claims god is literally above everything, only religion judges their neighbors for things they excuse in their dictator. That what Go is laughing at. You can and should judge the almighty, Crawley. An ineffable plan that does not exist is not evidence of good, it's a different kind of immoral: did you plan to let your kid eat bleach or did you sit there with glee claiming you wanted him to do the right thing and couldn't possibly tell him anything because that would "violate autonomy"? Again, ignorance isn't bliss: that's the point of the apple.

And if god gave up the knowledge of good and evil, to make that apple? You can't expect god to have knowledge of good and evil. Can't give up your cake and have it too.

Could you show me where you see evidence of these things? I'm asking honestly as I'm afraid I don't really see what you're saying here. I guess one of the reasons why I hesitate at the idea of the idea of God being a demon is that I think that a show that has spent time establishing that demons are angels who ran afoul of a fascist regime and that, with the exception of Satan who is, ya know, the literal devil, most of the demons are actually just the originally anti-fascists... which is also why they all hate the Nazis in 1941... and then makes a point to show that angels can do "demonic miracles" and that demons can do angelic magic so the differences between them basically amounts to hellfire/holy water and different colored feathers... the point of all of that to me is showing that there is no such thing as a demon really at all. It's something made up to "other"-ize angels to help The Metatron keep power. The demons are tortured angels and I bet that the concept of a demon is going to be eradicated in S3.

Shadwell even said how someone might do that back in S1 (and yeah, I know, I'm taking this from Shadwell lol but he gets to be accidentally right as much as the other characters and this scene was Very Important) and that's that you exorcise demons by "bell, book, and candle."

I don't know about you but I just saw Aziraphale light candles and ring a bell in his bookshop before he went with Coffee Dude in a parallel scene to the one where Shadwell brought up how to make demons disappear from the plot so hmm... I'm willing to place a bet on The Marvelous Mr. Fell's greatest trick being making the idea of demons disappear in S3.

In support of this? God referring to Crowley as a person alongside humans when discussing the nature of people in the baby swap and Her narrating the S1 ending in a positive way while explaining nightingales to the audience as the song plays and the lyric is: there were angels dining at The Ritz... The song and God are both calling Crowley a person and an angel in S1 so it's winking at the idea that demons are a made up thing that don't actually exist.

<<Frankly your "God is good" is the standard religious defense of the Christian god. GO is a satire of all that,>>

Whoa, hold up lol. In no way did I say that God was good. I just said She isn't evil. God is a cheeky bitch in her narration and I don't necessarily think all of what precious little we've seen Her actually do is positive. All I said is that what She has done correctly, in my opinion, is the big thing She needed to which is to be on the side of free will for Her creations and doing nothing to get in the way of ensuring that they have it.

There's also nothing "Christian standard" in believing in a God that advocates for free will and actually supports the positive stuff Jesus said to do. You are correct-- the show is a satire. It's making fun of religious fundamentalists who use Christianity as an excuse to hate and who take The Bible literally and who are incapable of critical thinking. That's half the joke with The Sound of Music and the parallel of fascism, like the lack of critical thinking in the Nazi Zombie Flesheaters.

God is Frances McDormand on Good Omens. God has She/They pronouns on this show. Her presentation is part of the satire of fundamentalists, not necessarily religion itself.

Also funny? I'm an atheist so I'm amused if you think I'm defending God from a Yay!Religion standpoint (on my Good Omens blog lol) when I'm pretty much the definition of raised-Roman-Catholic-and-now-is-basically-a-humanist-who-mediates. 😂 I think the single greatest and most bold lyric ever written is "and no religion, too" so I'm sorry for any confusion but I'm definitely not saying that God is Great because I'm defending Christianity. I'm just talking about Good Omens' God, specifically, and I can explain why I think that God can not be a villain on Good Omens and how that can fit with the elements of the show you're talking about.

What makes Good Omens work, imho, is that it's not just a sharp satire. It's about magic. It has a heart to it. It's warm and it's romantic. This means that there needs to be some possibility of the unexplainable or of destiny that probably lingers past the end of the show. There's not an Ineffable Plan in the sense that God's creations are following a predetermined path. She believes in them having free will and making their own choices. But, in Good Omens, God is, to the best of our knowledge, the creator of all of the other characters. Did She maybe stack the deck in the favor of Her creations a bit by making them as wonderfully imperfect as they are? Did She maybe make them with hopes that they'd find each other a bit? Is there maybe not predestined outcomes but a sense of destiny?

I don't think Crowley is wrong when he says in Tadfield that everyone in The Universe has free will... but I also don't think he's wrong in feeling that love is the kind of magic that he-- a literal sorcerer-- cannot fully explain and that, because there is magic in the world that he doesn't understand, he wonders about a sense of destiny or fate in a romantic way that he ascribes back to his creation.

Crowley believes that the same God who he believes (erroneously but he doesn't know that yet) is responsible for his fall made he and Aziraphale for each other. Let's say he's not wrong about that. Let's say there's even some subtle evidence in S3 that he might be right or it's left open a bit. Either way, it wouldn't make the show any less of a satire. I don't see the show as being a satire of spirituality so much as it's a satire of fundamentalism.

Maybe it's just my soppiness showing lol but I don't even believe in God and this was romantic...

...I'd be fine with a wink to the idea that Crowley and Aziraphale are fated and wouldn't find it incongruous with a show that balances dealing with darkness and its skewering of religious and political extremism with a soft heart and romance and magic.

<<because there isn't a binary between treating people like dolls you should have total dominion over, and letting your child eat bleach.>>

You're arguing for God's dominion if you believe that it's Her role to "stop the children from eating bleach" by keeping Armageddon at bay. It's not. Her creations are autonomous beings. They don't need Her. They have moral compasses of their own and can look after one another and hopefully will choose to do so. Why would God make beings that look to Her for guidance? Who is She to tell them what to do? She made them to be able to do for themselves, not blindly look to Her for everything. It's the religious fundamentalists the show is satirizing who say that God is in everything and God has a plan and it's all God's will and just pray. God isn't responsible for the bad decisions of Her creations-- they are. Blaming God is the same thing that the people the show is satirizing do instead of taking responsibility for their own actions.

<<A promise not to drown everyone again isn't kind, it's deranged. You know what kind of person says shit like that?>>

Yes. The Metatron. As I mentioned above, there's no evidence whatsoever that God ever said that. Aziraphale has simply heard that God's "a bit tetchy" so his orders came from another angel, who got them from? The Metatron.

Just as there's no evidence that God wrote the permit to take all that Job owned. The God of S1's narration is not a God who would believe that Job owned his kids but The Metatron would view those kids with the patriarchal sense of ownership which which he views all of the angels. Again, I'll say I believe the character that's credited as The Voice of God over the character who claims-- with zero evidence-- to be the one who can speak for God any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

<<An ineffable plan that does not exist is not evidence of good, it's a different kind of immoral: did you plan to let your kid eat bleach or did you sit there with glee claiming you wanted him to do the right thing and couldn't possibly tell him anything because that would "violate autonomy"? Again, ignorance isn't bliss: that's the point of the apple.>>

It's a little frightening that you think that what would make God not be a villain is for Her to exert control over adults. God's creations are not four year olds with bleach. That's not a viable comparison. You are advocating for Her to control autonomous beings and make decisions for them. That is not freedom. Freedom is having the choice to make mistakes. Adults don't need God, just as they don't need their parents to intervene because they're adults. You are equating adult beings with small children who need minding and that's a little scary.

This show that has themes of autonomy and its relation to freedom has plenty of villains already. Heaven and Hell are stealing memories, inflicting trauma, endless verbal and physical abuse. It still, though, would very much be in violation of the character's autonomy to show up and take over and do all the work of Her creations for them. Why would She want to do them more harm and take more from them?

<<You can, however, eat your cake and have it too, if "cake" is not cake but the same thing it represents in the Lockdown audio. That cake is not destroyed in its eating, continuing to exist for another round. Infinite rounds, one could even say.>>

The concept of Jesus & Satan trading places sounds to me like some of the Gnostic Christian teachings, which soon became heterodox. Possibly Doceticism or Manichaeism.

We've twice seen angels and demons treated as "missing their other half", A&C and then Gabriel and Beez. Jesus and Satan are also depicted as two sides of the same coin; canonically in the show, because heaven and hell are not all that different, and it follows the thread that the match for an angel is the demonic counterpart.

There is also the very old idea that Satan wasn't in fact sinning in his rebellion, but was ordered to do it by god--so that eventually people could learn right from wrong and be redeemed. You need to have two sides so people can choose. Heaven and hell had to exist, someone had to take the fall. Satan literally "takes the fall" and becomes a demon on god's orders. Again, we haven't seen either the war or the fall depicted directly in the show--and there's no reason to have not done that unless it would change the way we view things. We do see the war metaphorically among humans during the paintball war; reading that allegorically, literally neither side is wrong. God herself calls it a team bonding activity to identify leadership; this isn't a "woe are stupid angels", she's delighted about this. She does not care who wins; it's about the game for her, not about who's right, because there isn't anyone who's right. It's the side of obedience vs the side of what's right, a common moral conflict: do you trust in your leaders, those giving the orders, or are you more sure of yourself? Should you be allowed to say no and overrule those above you? Does hierarchy make right, does might make right? It's all just names for sides, like the angels and demons, heaven and hell.

Names for sides: like two sides of a coin, half of a whole: your left and your right. Aziraphale and Crowley. Gabriel and Beez. Jesus and Satan.

Sides often flip around, too--sometimes obedience is better because others really do know things you don't, but sometimes speaking up is better because hierarchy doesn't convey superiority, in either knowledge or deed. Sometimes obedience to the letter and not the spirit can save you and others; sometimes obedience ends in death and damnation, sometimes obedience means you hurt others, and sometimes obedience is the only way to save yourself. What's more important? Well....it depends. It swaps around. You have to choose your side every time.

Obedience meant Satan took the fall, swapped sides. Or at least...someone led the rebellion, and someone went to hell. Doesn't have to be the same person, does it? Not when they're two sides of the same coin, and can pass for each other.

Like how A&C swap sides, frequently. Not just literally playing for the other team, but taking each others' roles when raising Warlock: Crowley is the gardener, Az the carer, but they swap. At the end of S1, they do it again: Crowley is the questioner and the fighter, but it's Az who calls up god herself to demand why and try to save everyone. Crowley as an angel saying it's not just wallpaper and Az saying it's the Plan. Repetitions, infinities, over and over again, like a flipping a coin. Beez saving an angel, and Gabriel taking a fall to save himself. Just like Crowley saved an angel in Paris.

Except god likes threes, so two sides can't be all of it. Where's the third wheel? Shades of gray! Neither one side or the other, but both and neither. Morality, immorality, amorality. Heaven, hell, human. Angel, demon....god. But it's never that simple, is it? They all come from the same stock. God isn't wrong that it's "not a dark and stormy night", but she's not telling you the whole picture: ambiguity, not quite amorality but also neither moral nor immoral. An omission isn't the same as a lie but when you do it deliberately, then it sure is: you have to choose every time what's important. For god, there's nothing but that game: she does not choose based on morals but on what makes a good game. Like we do in fiction, in games.

Who has free will? Humans, explicitly. Angels and demons? Well, that's back to the rules creating reality: if you tell someone they can't do a thing, and they don't know any better what a lie is....if they trust you completely, such that they'll jump out a window at your command....how do we expect that to turn out? Gabriel's been playing the "lie for the greater good" game since before Job, because during Job he's already good enough to tell Az what to do without crossing any lines himself, and making it seem like it's all Az's idea. That's the opposite of how god acts: she lies to deceive, rather than Gabriel's lies to help. Quite literally the greater good, no wonder he was upset about that line in s1.

That leads us to consider what's "the opposite" as a concept, ie what's the other side of the coin, and what's the third wheel? Forwards, backwards, mixed up. This falls in with the idea of "satanic messages", ie if you play something backwards you get something evil. Like angels, turned backward are demons. Demons, flipped, are angels. The clock in s2 is also backwards; but if you flip it, it's magically corrected. The "sides", including heaven and hell, are reflections of each other. This slides in with the idea of multiple timelines and infinities, renewal and rebirth: the present and what we see has already happened many times over, and if you flip it around you get to see those reflections. Aka....run the show backwards and you get "satanic messages", the future and past. Flip the first season around, you get the story of creation. Second, you get the story of Jesus coming to earth. Third? Well, forward I'm guessing it's the apocalypse, a war they avert; so reflected, it's probably the Great War and the fall, aka it's the war they chose to have and consequences that weren't avoided.

I have a post on some of the scenes I've "run backwards". In it, God is a demon, she quite literally says "I don't see the point of morality", and we learn that Jesus and Satan swapped places.

>You are advocating for Her to control autonomous beings and make decisions for them.

Again, this is basic god apology. I said the opposite of that.

The classic line is "god the father", and "we are all his children". Because, the classic defense goes, we are far too ignorant to comprehend the ineffable.

Do you know who's far too ignorant to comprehend that drinking bleach is not a good idea? Because they literally know nothing?

Children.

The angels were created with zero knowledge of anything, except being told they can't disobey. They literally did not know what a "lie" is, or that anyone would do that. They had zero capacity to "think for themselves".

God let the angels drink bleach. Because, as classic apology goes, that's just life and it would be super duper sinful to interfere with that.

Everyone is born knowing nothing. What you teach people matters, because they don't know how things work. They do not have the concept of "lie" or "ambiguity" or "abuse", they lack the ability to think for themselves, until they are taught they can. But they can't do that if they're explicitly taught that thinking is wrong. That disobeying is....sinful. That asking for help from the person who created you, your Father, is batshit insane and a grievous sin to be harshly punished.

You stop an infant from drinking bleach because that's common sense and the most basic level of care required. You put up a sign on a bridge that's out or on electric fences because.....people do not know and can't be expected to know the bridge is out or that they're going to get shocked. Because providing information is the basic level of care required. If they go ahead and drive off the bridge anyway, they did actually choose to exercise free will. But they can't make that choice if you don't tell them. If you neglect them.

It's not autonomy. Not giving people enough information to make their own choices is neglect. Like a dealer who won't tell you the rules. Explicitly who god is.

As I said, dictatorship and neglect are two sides of the same nasty coin. Neither are acceptable, and defending neglect as "respect" isn't either. But they're a false dichotomy, there are other options beyond those. Defending neglect as care is classic god apology. It is literally the "problem of evil".

Because it ties in to 1941, World War II, and the Nazi Nuremberg Defense.

"Just following orders" does not excuse heinous acts. There is a time for disobedience, a time to think and act for yourself.

Which reminds me of the S1e3 cold open:

- Aziraphale lies to God

- Aziraphale follows orders regarding Noah’s family

- Jesus is killed by the Romans for teaching subversion.

- Hamlet’s soliloquy is all about making choices, deciding how to act or not act.

- The French Revolution is a sticky moral situation, shades of grey. Cutting off lots of people's heads... is bad. Overthrowing the rich and entitled oppressors?

- WWII, Aziraphale tries to be subversive, and fails.

In a global context, that's the biggest and best example of the Allies conducting a "Just War." (The Allies were far from perfect. The Allies didn't have murder factories in nearly every town.)

I think it's good to remember that originally, like *in the book of Job,* Satan isn't a name. It's a title.

It's the Adversary, an Angel chosen by God to be the celestial Prosecutor in a court of law.

I know a lot of people think Good Omens is Christian fanfic. Yes, Jesus appears in the cold open.

As an ex-Catholic, I was intrigued just as much by what the crucifixion scene did NOT say.

We did not see a resurrection.

He's called "a carpenter from Galilee."

And that also brings us back to Eden, to Adam and Eve, the serpent and the apple.

Original Sin is a Christian doctrine. It can be dated to the first centuries of the Common Era.

Judaism doesn't teach Original Sin.

The midrash on the apple story are not so simple. (I'm rereading Elaine Pagels to remember more of why / how / timeline.)

Good Omens *does* show Eve conceived in Eden. That they had sex.

The connections between sex and eating the apple, however, are implied rather than stated.

It doesn't have to be that way.

The concept of sex as dirty is also largely a Christian convention. (Not entirely, Rome had vestal virgins, but largely.)

IIRC, it is not part of the Jewish interpretations of that part of Genesis. Nor, IIUC, is it part of Jewish teachings at all.

Jesus was not the only apocalyptic preacher, he was just the one who got famous. I kind of wonder if Jesus was sent to die either to throw another wrench in the works, or because God saw what was already happening: people were treating each other as if everyone was evil, and so in order to have her game be interesting instead of full of the same thing, she had to say something along the lines of "it doesn't have to be this way".

That would fit in with the idea of sin not being sin, and with the shades of gray--"forgiving people" and showing another way is good, but refusing to say sin doesn't exist is bad, and doing through human torture and sacrifice is also bad. It explicitly connects suffering with purity. It's also the whole idea of a game, of "blorbos": you sure can torture fake people, but not real people. You sure can make up horrific rules and deceive your blorbos, but you can't do that to real people.

I've always thought that seeing the fly enter the box was meant to signal to us that Gabriel was not carrying the fly in the box, therefore the box may have contained something else. Did the something else get absorbed by the fly (which is a container)?

It does imply that the box was not carrying the fly. I don't think he loses his memory until after a time in the elevator--eyes appear to still be purple on the CC. The CC shows him struggling to turn the box over to write on the bottom, then the next shows it as if it's light, then we see him at the elevator where he takes the matchbox out of it and it's still heavy through the end of the CC.

No exactly, but it could lead him there. Have you read the metas from @vidavalor that has written some about Gabriel, and his personal friendship with Azi and the knowledge that he has about the relationship between Crowley and Azi And the protection that he has given them thru the ages. The fly is also in one of those metas, are very really interesting

Yeah Gabriel is acting a part he does not want to play, just like Crowley and Az must. He's known about them, and frankly I think he's always trying to avoid "doing his heavenly duty" aka taking action against anyone for sin. We see him playing the idiot in the Job flashback....so that he can let the kids live. The only time we see him actually angry is when he's got to obliterate Az at the end of s1, because he can no longer weasel out of having to mete out "justice". He is angry because he does not want to kill Az, but he has no choice.

He has to trumpet the party line but he does not believe in it. If he does not know about it then he need not do anything.

So if all his Gabriel-ness is in the fly, I think that fly literally has a mind of its own, just as Jim has a different mind of his own. Jim isn't just a body, he's the factory reset, he does have a mind of his own but I think angels were originally created to be trusting and to obey. Part of the point of god's game is to see if they can defy their programming. She literally set them up to fail, and wants to see if the impossible is possible: being someone else. Because if you are created to obey, can you defy that? Does that make you a different person, because that's what "sinner" as an epithet is, that's what eternal damnation means? Kicker is, if angels were originally created as trusting, god has already made them defy their programming: can you take an innocent person and make them participate in evil? What does it take to corrupt someone, so that they actually think their actions are still just? And then of course, can you do it again in the other direction?

First came the corruption, the quite literal original sin, of putting obedience over morality and labeling that a "higher calling", the "greater good". Then comes the ironic redemption: can you defy your obedience programming and learn to trust yourself over others? Trust in who you are and what you believe?

Which is all to say: yeah, the fly led him to Aziraphale, because the fly IS Gabriel. Jim followed the fly because he's a factory reset angel at that point, built to trust and obey, aka blindly follow orders. An actual "innocent baby".

Gabriel isn't split in S2, I don't think. Not really. His memories are blocked, not erased. The Fly is... I think it's like... think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself. The trauma of what happens blocks his memories. I don't actually think he got amnesia from putting his memories in The Fly; I think he got it from what happened to him. His behavior during the week is consistent with trauma-induced retrograde amnesia. Basically, his mind sought to protect itself so it threw up a wall around everything traumatic and kept him from being able to access that information, even thought it was still there. Gabriel's trauma was all-encompassing so it took his whole identity away as to remember that would be to remember what happened.

Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like. His anxiety spikes when the angels are there because there is a part of his mind that knows who they are and he is freaking out because they tried to kill him and are now in his safe space. It just won't tell the rest of his mind why he feels anxious around them because that would be to remember the trauma and he can't. He is calmer around Crowley and Aziraphale, whom he went to instinctively because his mind knows that they are safe. His mind won't let him remember who they are because to do that would be to remember angels and demons and things associated with his trauma but it lets him recall the way to the bookshop because that's the place to go to be safe.

We see that he can have memories without context long before The Fly gives him back his memories in full. He knows "Everyday" and there's a suggestion he recognized Crowley as Bildad the Shuite without the Heaven/Hell context of it during the miracle to keep him safe. When he's talking with Crowley later in the season and feels comfortable, he remembers more-- the matchbox and even a bit of the trauma for the first time with the "institutional problem." All of this was in Gabriel's mind all season before he opened The Fly. He just couldn't access it but not because he didn't have The Fly-- because his mind was protecting him.

God is the one who tells us that she's playing an ineffable game of her own devising. She calls herself a dealer who won't tell you the rules, etc. That's called horror. And she's clearly amused by it. God is an actual demon by nature, as opposed to the other demons who are forced into terrorizing people.

>What if anything that's happening is the fault of The Metatron-- an evil angel telling everyone that he speaks for God when he really can do no such thing?

I think the Metatron is indeed Lucifer, but that's because Jesus is a horror just like god herself, and he and Lucy swapped places after the fall. Just like A&C have been swapping places, playing for the other team. Literally and figuratively. Because Jesus is a horror who loves running hell and Lucifer is the "good guy". Lucifer played Jesus on earth, he's the one who died on the cross. The Satan we saw in s1 was Jesus putting on airs.

>God can do nothing about any of it because if She intervenes, She's robbing all of Her creations of free will. If even one of them doesn't have it, none of them do.

This is the problem of evil. We have seen that standing by and doing nothing is treated as immoral. Futzing around worrying about the consequences to yourself or burbling about how to justify it does not excuse inaction. If the worst of the demons would intervene to help people, and god would not, then the worst of the demons is infinitely morally superior to god.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

Much as any other game we ourselves play, much as any other fictional story we tell about serial killers and chainsaw murderers....she set up the rules. She set up the game. Fictionally enjoying a chainsaw massacre is fine, because it's not real. As we have explicitly been told, these are real people and you can't treat them like blorbos. Which circles back around to the nature vs nurture, the "rules are reality"....

>Or, God didn't actually program anybody. What if God loves Her creations and gave them free will and dominion over their universe?

I said "program" specifically because that's what rules=reality is. Does it matter if you innately create someone who is unable to obey, vs telling a completely naive person that they can't disobey? It's what we do to children: expect them to obey, hit them when they don't, regardless of who's in the right because children have zero ability to judge for themselves or to fight back. Indeed, "fighting back" is punished by being hit more. Simply "talking back", even when the child is in the right, is punished. You cannot question anything, because that's called disobedience, disloyalty, treason--that's the fall.

Might does not make right. Rules are not reality. But that's what we teach, and that's what people do not question....because questioning reality is treason. Change is not possible. Might makes right means that what the mightiest wants, she gets, and that's what makes reality. You can't change that until.....you have your own house and make your own rules, which isn't actually changing the status quo at all because now you're the embodiment of might makes right.

Tons of feudal fiefs mean you are the king in your domain, and you don't change a single thing about how stuff works that makes you king. Because the rules were already established, that nobody can question those above them.....so as much as you tell yourself you created Eden for your underlings, if they can't leave, if they believe they aren't allowed to question anything---that's not all the different than every other fief lord. How are your underlings to know you won't hurt them just like everyone else would for being treasonous? That's literally what "god is testing me" means. None of them respond with "she's evil and this is wrong". Because loyalty tests, shit tests, are considered perfectly fine, because might makes right and we can't question her. So....obviously.....anything god does is the highest of morality and she deserves to be abusive, because dontchasee it's not actually abuse, you deserve it. Just like Job.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

That's the ineffable game. Will anyone throw caution to the wind and break the system? It's great entertainment. Tell people it's impossible, because you made the rules like that, and then see if people will cause an apocalypse--that's what upending the system IS--to.....just to talk to you.

So yeah, god is cheering on her own chainsaw massacre victims. She's got the chainsaw. Just like we cheer on fictional people in horror movies, but listen, they're not real, and we created that story. We are the fictional serial killer. God did the same thing....except with real people. She created a horror game with real people, she's the one chasing them down to kill them. She will not stop, she will go ahead and kill them. She's the knife at Issac's throat, but this time she does not tell Abraham to stop.

Under might makes right and the rules are reality, that means everything that happens to you because you can't stop god--and no one can stop her--is your fault and you deserve it. Like Job said. If you do not fight back, if you do not win, you deserve it, and it's not abuse, it's "edification", suffering makes you a saint. If you're not a saint, then clearly you just need to suffer more.

>God never says there's an Ineffable Plan-- She says there's an Ineffable Game. A game means everyone has free will & is making their own choices. It's Heaven that's trying to tell everyone that they're doing the will of God but God herself is saying go live free so that's why I trust Her more than The Metatron. :) I know, there's so many theories-- it's great fun!

But rules are reality, might makes right, and so anything god says is treated as immutable reality. We see this a lot in Star Trek with the "vulcans never lie/you lied/no, I implied or made an error". Except god does lie, because she told everyone she doesn't--that's what "don't question me" means: she is never wrong. Which is a lie.

God wrote the Great Plan. With the intent that it be carried out. To see how people act--again, she's the chainsaw serial killer. It is not mercy if she does not kill you, it's just serial killer behavior. Mercy requires that you believe you deserve to die, that she's right to torture people. She told people that the plan is reality, deliberately deceiving people.

Who has free will when you're told something is immutable reality? When the rules say it's not, and rules are reality? Unless you want to die--and nobody ever chooses death, do they? so predictable--you cannot fight. Nothing changes. You can't do anything. Because you will get caught, god will know because she said she has omniscience, you can't get away with it, you can't overthrow god under might makes right. Fighting immutable reality means you die, means you deserved eternal torture. Means you were wrong to do it.

And again, if everyone has free will and these are real people, what does it say about god that she sits back and allows all this? Deliberately deceives them and does not correct them? Is she just too stupid to understand that's what she's doing? We don't even tolerate that from toddlers. She cannot be both that stupid and omniscient. She also cannot be called benevolent. It's outright neglect. Toddlers also have "free will" but if your parents go "oh well, he's drinking bleach, freeeee willllll" that is called abuse through neglect and you lose custody. If god is lord our father, then at the very least hold her to the standards we expect of even the most incompetent parents.

>The Fly is… I think it's like… think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself [...] Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like.

It is a depiction of trauma, yes, but the reason isn't "this is ptsd" in universe. If you take files off a computer, you can still access them if you go get the external drive. The fly is a container, storage, and he can access that with great effort. But his head isn't built for that anymore--you can't just plug in any drive and expect it to work, a floppy disk doesn't fit into modern computers. You can still get the info off it with great effort, but it'll be corrupt. You have to access it correctly or you lose everything. Doing it with great effort results in partial or corrupt access.

He could have also chosen which memories to keep, which to shunt to the fly. He didn't keep "all the angels shouting for joy", he seems to have only kept his song. Factory reset, with a few exceptions. Wipe the drive. Except the fly isn't actually a computer so having "leaks", or the fly/aka Gabriel choosing to back port some more info can happen.

Gabriel is a stand in for Christ this season (the role swaps around, but mostly it's him). In the bookshop attack, it's the harrowing of hell; when Christ died, his body didn't go to hell but his spirit did. That's the split: it's why the demons reject Gabriel (not literally, metaphorically) and it's why Crowley is the one who saves the people and goes up to heaven. Jim is the body, the fly/Gabriel is the soul, and Crowley is the divinity.

I think that's also why Jim tries to kill the fly. They are not completely separate things; what your body does affects your soul, vice versa. If you kill your soul, you get to live free of sin when it goes to hell and you stay behind. But giving that up means you don't know who you are, you live in ignorance. Ignorance is bliss only if what you don't know doesn't affect you. What you don't know can still kill you, as with the dealer won't tell you the rules or even let you see at all.

>And FYI-- I'm really excited to find someone else who also thinks that Gabriel knew Aziraphale was lying in the Job minisode and went along with it because he could get away with it since Crowley and Aziraphale had given him a way out of killing the kids. 😊

She's using tongue-in-cheek humor to describe free will. There is no Ineffable Plan-- there is an Ineffable Game. The Game of Life requires active participants who have free will. She can't tell them that they do or else they wouldn't actually have it, would they? So, it's something of a game. It's definitely not a plan. The game is everyone figuring out for themselves that there is no Ineffable Plan and that they have their own selves and own senses of morality to answer for. There's nothing horrific about it-- it's delightful, imo. She's verbally winking at the audience while describing it. It's the same sense of humor She shows throughout her narration. Ask why God is narrating Crowley & Aziraphale's story in the first place? She clearly loves them and wants them to be well. How do you square things like the nightingale ending of S1 with the idea that God is a villain?

<<I think the Metatron is indeed Lucifer, but that's because Jesus is a horror just like god herself, and he and Lucy swapped places after the fall. Just like A&C have been swapping places, playing for the other team. Literally and figuratively. Because Jesus is a horror who loves running hell and Lucifer is the "good guy". Lucifer played Jesus on earth, he's the one who died on the cross. The Satan we saw in s1 was Jesus putting on airs.>>

Respectfully, we're now at the 2/3rds mark of the show and if they wanted to lay the groundwork for something like what you're talking about, we'd have seen evidence for it already. I don't disagree that both Satan and The Metatron are evil. I think that's kind of the whole point-- the angels aren't all good and the demons aren't all evil. I hear what you're saying about an element of swap, though, in parallel, and perhaps I could tempt you with the theory I've written up in different ways in a couple of posts where the end of S2 is Aziraphale being tempted by Satan who is appearing as The Metatron because that's who can offer Aziraphale the job he thinks he needs to keep Crowley safe?

<<This is the problem of evil. We have seen that standing by and doing nothing is treated as immoral. Futzing around worrying about the consequences to yourself or burbling about how to justify it does not excuse inaction. If the worst of the demons would intervene to help people, and god would not, then the worst of the demons is infinitely morally superior to god.>>

To clarify: for any other being in The Universe, standing by and doing nothing would be morally indefensible. For God, standing by and doing nothing *is doing something* because She's the creator of everyone. She has the power to either make everyone do her bidding or to give them all free will. If She makes them all do her bidding, none of them are living free and She has enslaved all of her people. Why would She want to do that? She loves them. She wants them to live free but that's something that, as every adult knows, you've got to figure out for yourself. No one else can tell you how to live. If God were to intervene with even one person, she'd be suppressing that person's free will and, just by doing so, would be creating a sense of Ineffable Plan that She does not believe in because it robs all of Her creations of free will. If one of us is not free, none of us are free. God supports freedom so She lets us have dominion over the universe because it's ours, not hers. That's what allows her creations the ability to be free to be who they are. That's the only way God can love and She's doing it well, if you ask me.

<<That's the ineffable game. Will anyone throw caution to the wind and break the system? It's great entertainment. Tell people it's impossible, because you made the rules like that, and then see if people will cause an apocalypse--that's what upending the system IS--to.....just to talk to you.>>

She didn't make the rules-- the angels did. We make messes of our own devising. God isn't responsible for them-- we are. If we want out of them, we have to figure that way out ourselves. You might be feeling run down sometimes and always in the same daily round... you might find yourself stuck in traffic in the highway you created. It's up to you to blow up your halo, use your resources, lean on one another for support, and get yourself out of it. That's what the Ineffable Game is-- having free will to make your own choices and live your own life. God doesn't know if the world will come to an end. She doesn't know if Armageddon will happen because it hasn't played out yet. It's not up to Her whether or not it does. It's up to Her creations. The way to stop Armageddon is them figuring that out and She can't tell them or else she'd be exerting her will upon them and taking from them their learn and grow and be themselves and be free.

<<But rules are reality, might makes right, and so anything god says is treated as immutable reality.>>

Well, She's also the theatrical device known as a "voice of God"-- a disembodied, omniscient narrator who tells the audience everything they need to know to understand the universe of a play or a teleplay. She teaches us how to understand language and gives us all the information we might need to know about how Heaven and Hell works and She's funny as fuck so, yeah, I trust her. A lot more than that dude who showed up and said "I speak for God!" when we've never seen a shred of evidence that he actually can. 😉

<<God wrote the Great Plan. With the intent that it be carried out. To see how people act--again, she's the chainsaw serial killer.>>

Says who? There's no evidence there is a Great Plan and a ton of suggestion that there *isn't* one. No one can tell you what it says. Beez and Gabriel don't know what it is and when Crowley and Aziraphale realized that in one of the big moments of S1, they all got one step closer to figuring out this is all a sham. None of the main characters have ever been seen talking to God about it. I don't think Gabriel or The Metatron actually can talk to God. There's a floating head who claims to be running everything and is about to be all "I am the great and powerful Oz!" in S3. They're all about to find out that no one knows how to chat with Frances McDormand because God isn't in charge of Heaven-- they are. The angels are going to take back Heaven from The Metatron, the whole concept of being a demon is going to be a thing of the past, and they'll all have to work together to figure out what they want Heaven to look like going forward. God isn't the villain-- She's proud of the main characters who are finding their way towards a better world.

<< It is a depiction of trauma, yes, but the reason isn't "this is ptsd" in universe.>>

All due respect: yes, it is. The point of the series is that the angels and demons are like the humans and the humans are like the angels and demons. Crowley and Aziraphale's PTSD is an ongoing plot point. Aziraphale went to the spot where he lost Crowley in Edinburgh during S2 to work on his trauma. Crowley dealing with the bookshop fire is actually what saved the bookshop during the attack because of the fire extinguishers. Anxiety, depression, and PTSD and the effects of those things are very common things woven throughout the story for the supernatural characters in different ways because that's the point of the story. It's to talk about the business of living, which is all the same, no matter what type of fictional being we're talking about.

<<Gabriel is a stand in for Christ this season>>

He's a martyr, I'll give you that much lol. Gabriel could stand to go 30% less hard on "nice to meet you, do you want me to throw myself in front of an angry mob for you or could we do friendship bracelets?" That's a feature of trauma, btw. See: above.

<<In the bookshop attack, it's the harrowing of hell; when Christ died, his body didn't go to hell but his spirit did. That's the split: it's why the demons reject Gabriel (not literally, metaphorically)>>

The demons couldn't see Gabriel because he was protected from darkness by Beez, Crowley & Aziraphale. The idea here is that the bookshop attack is Aziraphale having a mental health crisis. The bookshop has always been metaphorical for Aziraphale-- to the point that he even makes it a sexual metaphor with Crowley as well. To this end, who can get into the bookshop, how, and to what extent, represents the voices to which Aziraphale is listening or open to listening to at any given time.

A group of demons attacking the bookshop-- led by a demon played by the same woman who played the person within whom Aziraphale shared a mind and body in S1-- is then symbolic of a worsening anxiety attack. The season peaks with Aziraphale having let in everyone in the neighborhood, plus having Maggie and Gabriel under the same roof, plus having a coming out party of sorts for him and Crowley, plus nine other stressors at once and so the demons representing Aziraphale's inner demons show up in the midst of it.

The Devil in Good Omens is really just darkness. It's Satan, yes, and demons, yes, but metaphorically, it's not really that religious. It can be inner demons. It can be depression, anxiety, trauma, negative thoughts. That's what's at the core of the bookshop attack, imo.

Crowley takes out most of the humans because they all represent different aspects of things we use to keep the darkness at bay. Maggie and Nina and Gabriel gather up and use the fire extinguishers that they have from Crowley's trauma to protect the shop. The demons can only be stopped by Aziraphale taking off his halo-- which is around his head, a tight band, not above his head, so it's mental health related to the horrible perfectionism of being forced to try to be a perfect angel all the time.

The demons can't see Gabriel because the darkness can't get to him anymore because he's been protected by Beez, Crowley and Aziraphale. It's showing how the characters can keep one another safe and how taking care of each other is the way we make sure that none of us are left behind to get caught by "The Devil." On Good Omens, a fall can be the darkness of a mental health breakdown that leads to the darkness of the literal Devil showing up at your door but, in real life, the same ideas apply in a secular way as well.

Frankly your "God is good" is the standard religious defense of the Christian god. GO is a satire of all that, it's laughing at how ridiculous "but it's moral to let people do evil" is, because there isn't a binary between treating people like dolls you should have total dominion over, and letting your child eat bleach. Control vs neglect; neither are moral choices, it's a false dichotomy. You can help people without dehumanizing them. We do it every day. Only a dictator would go "you're on your own if I can't control you, this is generous of me and good for you". Aka: if you need help, clearly you don't deserve autonomy, yeah? Clearly there is no other option.

You're supposed to think God is good. "Supposed to" and "it's true" are not the same thing. God is good is the rule, not reality. God said is a rule, like simon says, it's not reality. Might makes right again. Really weird how "I did this one less than decent thing" means humans are evil and deserve hell, but for god "I could have been worse" is incontrovertible evidence she's morally superior. Instead of the threat and confession it actually is. A promise not to drown everyone again isn't kind, it's deranged. You know what kind of person says shit like that?

Evil doesn't exist, it's a choice. It's every choice. A person is not capable of being only good or only evil, that's what shades of gray is. Every choice can be different. God herself is not an exception, she too chooses. And she lies about it.

GO is a satire. They aren't going to skewer every other part of religion but then turn around and go "except god, she's impeccable". God is the entire basis of the religion, it's not exempt. It does not get special treatment. Only religion claims god is literally above everything, only religion judges their neighbors for things they excuse in their dictator. That what Go is laughing at. You can and should judge the almighty, Crawley. An ineffable plan that does not exist is not evidence of good, it's a different kind of immoral: did you plan to let your kid eat bleach or did you sit there with glee claiming you wanted him to do the right thing and couldn't possibly tell him anything because that would "violate autonomy"? Again, ignorance isn't bliss: that's the point of the apple.

And if god gave up the knowledge of good and evil, to make that apple? You can't expect god to have knowledge of good and evil. Can't give up your cake and have it too.

Could you show me where you see evidence of these things? I'm asking honestly as I'm afraid I don't really see what you're saying here. I guess one of the reasons why I hesitate at the idea of the idea of God being a demon is that I think that a show that has spent time establishing that demons are angels who ran afoul of a fascist regime and that, with the exception of Satan who is, ya know, the literal devil, most of the demons are actually just the originally anti-fascists... which is also why they all hate the Nazis in 1941... and then makes a point to show that angels can do "demonic miracles" and that demons can do angelic magic so the differences between them basically amounts to hellfire/holy water and different colored feathers... the point of all of that to me is showing that there is no such thing as a demon really at all. It's something made up to "other"-ize angels to help The Metatron keep power. The demons are tortured angels and I bet that the concept of a demon is going to be eradicated in S3.

Shadwell even said how someone might do that back in S1 (and yeah, I know, I'm taking this from Shadwell lol but he gets to be accidentally right as much as the other characters and this scene was Very Important) and that's that you exorcise demons by "bell, book, and candle."

I don't know about you but I just saw Aziraphale light candles and ring a bell in his bookshop before he went with Coffee Dude in a parallel scene to the one where Shadwell brought up how to make demons disappear from the plot so hmm... I'm willing to place a bet on The Marvelous Mr. Fell's greatest trick being making the idea of demons disappear in S3.

In support of this? God referring to Crowley as a person alongside humans when discussing the nature of people in the baby swap and Her narrating the S1 ending in a positive way while explaining nightingales to the audience as the song plays and the lyric is: there were angels dining at The Ritz... The song and God are both calling Crowley a person and an angel in S1 so it's winking at the idea that demons are a made up thing that don't actually exist.

<<Frankly your "God is good" is the standard religious defense of the Christian god. GO is a satire of all that,>>

Whoa, hold up lol. In no way did I say that God was good. I just said She isn't evil. God is a cheeky bitch in her narration and I don't necessarily think all of what precious little we've seen Her actually do is positive. All I said is that what She has done correctly, in my opinion, is the big thing She needed to which is to be on the side of free will for Her creations and doing nothing to get in the way of ensuring that they have it.

There's also nothing "Christian standard" in believing in a God that advocates for free will and actually supports the positive stuff Jesus said to do. You are correct-- the show is a satire. It's making fun of religious fundamentalists who use Christianity as an excuse to hate and who take The Bible literally and who are incapable of critical thinking. That's half the joke with The Sound of Music and the parallel of fascism, like the lack of critical thinking in the Nazi Zombie Flesheaters.

God is Frances McDormand on Good Omens. God has She/They pronouns on this show. Her presentation is part of the satire of fundamentalists, not necessarily religion itself.

Also funny? I'm an atheist so I'm amused if you think I'm defending God from a Yay!Religion standpoint (on my Good Omens blog lol) when I'm pretty much the definition of raised-Roman-Catholic-and-now-is-basically-a-humanist-who-mediates. 😂 I think the single greatest and most bold lyric ever written is "and no religion, too" so I'm sorry for any confusion but I'm definitely not saying that God is Great because I'm defending Christianity. I'm just talking about Good Omens' God, specifically, and I can explain why I think that God can not be a villain on Good Omens and how that can fit with the elements of the show you're talking about.

What makes Good Omens work, imho, is that it's not just a sharp satire. It's about magic. It has a heart to it. It's warm and it's romantic. This means that there needs to be some possibility of the unexplainable or of destiny that probably lingers past the end of the show. There's not an Ineffable Plan in the sense that God's creations are following a predetermined path. She believes in them having free will and making their own choices. But, in Good Omens, God is, to the best of our knowledge, the creator of all of the other characters. Did She maybe stack the deck in the favor of Her creations a bit by making them as wonderfully imperfect as they are? Did She maybe make them with hopes that they'd find each other a bit? Is there maybe not predestined outcomes but a sense of destiny?

I don't think Crowley is wrong when he says in Tadfield that everyone in The Universe has free will... but I also don't think he's wrong in feeling that love is the kind of magic that he-- a literal sorcerer-- cannot fully explain and that, because there is magic in the world that he doesn't understand, he wonders about a sense of destiny or fate in a romantic way that he ascribes back to his creation.

Crowley believes that the same God who he believes (erroneously but he doesn't know that yet) is responsible for his fall made he and Aziraphale for each other. Let's say he's not wrong about that. Let's say there's even some subtle evidence in S3 that he might be right or it's left open a bit. Either way, it wouldn't make the show any less of a satire. I don't see the show as being a satire of spirituality so much as it's a satire of fundamentalism.

Maybe it's just my soppiness showing lol but I don't even believe in God and this was romantic...

...I'd be fine with a wink to the idea that Crowley and Aziraphale are fated and wouldn't find it incongruous with a show that balances dealing with darkness and its skewering of religious and political extremism with a soft heart and romance and magic.

<<because there isn't a binary between treating people like dolls you should have total dominion over, and letting your child eat bleach.>>

You're arguing for God's dominion if you believe that it's Her role to "stop the children from eating bleach" by keeping Armageddon at bay. It's not. Her creations are autonomous beings. They don't need Her. They have moral compasses of their own and can look after one another and hopefully will choose to do so. Why would God make beings that look to Her for guidance? Who is She to tell them what to do? She made them to be able to do for themselves, not blindly look to Her for everything. It's the religious fundamentalists the show is satirizing who say that God is in everything and God has a plan and it's all God's will and just pray. God isn't responsible for the bad decisions of Her creations-- they are. Blaming God is the same thing that the people the show is satirizing do instead of taking responsibility for their own actions.

<<A promise not to drown everyone again isn't kind, it's deranged. You know what kind of person says shit like that?>>

Yes. The Metatron. As I mentioned above, there's no evidence whatsoever that God ever said that. Aziraphale has simply heard that God's "a bit tetchy" so his orders came from another angel, who got them from? The Metatron.

Just as there's no evidence that God wrote the permit to take all that Job owned. The God of S1's narration is not a God who would believe that Job owned his kids but The Metatron would view those kids with the patriarchal sense of ownership which which he views all of the angels. Again, I'll say I believe the character that's credited as The Voice of God over the character who claims-- with zero evidence-- to be the one who can speak for God any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

<<An ineffable plan that does not exist is not evidence of good, it's a different kind of immoral: did you plan to let your kid eat bleach or did you sit there with glee claiming you wanted him to do the right thing and couldn't possibly tell him anything because that would "violate autonomy"? Again, ignorance isn't bliss: that's the point of the apple.>>

It's a little frightening that you think that what would make God not be a villain is for Her to exert control over adults. God's creations are not four year olds with bleach. That's not a viable comparison. You are advocating for Her to control autonomous beings and make decisions for them. That is not freedom. Freedom is having the choice to make mistakes. Adults don't need God, just as they don't need their parents to intervene because they're adults. You are equating adult beings with small children who need minding and that's a little scary.

This show that has themes of autonomy and its relation to freedom has plenty of villains already. Heaven and Hell are stealing memories, inflicting trauma, endless verbal and physical abuse. It still, though, would very much be in violation of the character's autonomy to show up and take over and do all the work of Her creations for them. Why would She want to do them more harm and take more from them?

<<You can, however, eat your cake and have it too, if "cake" is not cake but the same thing it represents in the Lockdown audio. That cake is not destroyed in its eating, continuing to exist for another round. Infinite rounds, one could even say.>>

The concept of Jesus & Satan trading places sounds to me like some of the Gnostic Christian teachings, which soon became heterodox. Possibly Doceticism or Manichaeism.

We've twice seen angels and demons treated as "missing their other half", A&C and then Gabriel and Beez. Jesus and Satan are also depicted as two sides of the same coin; canonically in the show, because heaven and hell are not all that different, and it follows the thread that the match for an angel is the demonic counterpart.

There is also the very old idea that Satan wasn't in fact sinning in his rebellion, but was ordered to do it by god--so that eventually people could learn right from wrong and be redeemed. You need to have two sides so people can choose. Heaven and hell had to exist, someone had to take the fall. Satan literally "takes the fall" and becomes a demon on god's orders. Again, we haven't seen either the war or the fall depicted directly in the show--and there's no reason to have not done that unless it would change the way we view things. We do see the war metaphorically among humans during the paintball war; reading that allegorically, literally neither side is wrong. God herself calls it a team bonding activity to identify leadership; this isn't a "woe are stupid angels", she's delighted about this. She does not care who wins; it's about the game for her, not about who's right, because there isn't anyone who's right. It's the side of obedience vs the side of what's right, a common moral conflict: do you trust in your leaders, those giving the orders, or are you more sure of yourself? Should you be allowed to say no and overrule those above you? Does hierarchy make right, does might make right? It's all just names for sides, like the angels and demons, heaven and hell.

Names for sides: like two sides of a coin, half of a whole: your left and your right. Aziraphale and Crowley. Gabriel and Beez. Jesus and Satan.

Sides often flip around, too--sometimes obedience is better because others really do know things you don't, but sometimes speaking up is better because hierarchy doesn't convey superiority, in either knowledge or deed. Sometimes obedience to the letter and not the spirit can save you and others; sometimes obedience ends in death and damnation, sometimes obedience means you hurt others, and sometimes obedience is the only way to save yourself. What's more important? Well....it depends. It swaps around. You have to choose your side every time.

Obedience meant Satan took the fall, swapped sides. Or at least...someone led the rebellion, and someone went to hell. Doesn't have to be the same person, does it? Not when they're two sides of the same coin, and can pass for each other.

Like how A&C swap sides, frequently. Not just literally playing for the other team, but taking each others' roles when raising Warlock: Crowley is the gardener, Az the carer, but they swap. At the end of S1, they do it again: Crowley is the questioner and the fighter, but it's Az who calls up god herself to demand why and try to save everyone. Crowley as an angel saying it's not just wallpaper and Az saying it's the Plan. Repetitions, infinities, over and over again, like a flipping a coin. Beez saving an angel, and Gabriel taking a fall to save himself. Just like Crowley saved an angel in Paris.

Except god likes threes, so two sides can't be all of it. Where's the third wheel? Shades of gray! Neither one side or the other, but both and neither. Morality, immorality, amorality. Heaven, hell, human. Angel, demon....god. But it's never that simple, is it? They all come from the same stock. God isn't wrong that it's "not a dark and stormy night", but she's not telling you the whole picture: ambiguity, not quite amorality but also neither moral nor immoral. An omission isn't the same as a lie but when you do it deliberately, then it sure is: you have to choose every time what's important. For god, there's nothing but that game: she does not choose based on morals but on what makes a good game. Like we do in fiction, in games.

Who has free will? Humans, explicitly. Angels and demons? Well, that's back to the rules creating reality: if you tell someone they can't do a thing, and they don't know any better what a lie is....if they trust you completely, such that they'll jump out a window at your command....how do we expect that to turn out? Gabriel's been playing the "lie for the greater good" game since before Job, because during Job he's already good enough to tell Az what to do without crossing any lines himself, and making it seem like it's all Az's idea. That's the opposite of how god acts: she lies to deceive, rather than Gabriel's lies to help. Quite literally the greater good, no wonder he was upset about that line in s1.

That leads us to consider what's "the opposite" as a concept, ie what's the other side of the coin, and what's the third wheel? Forwards, backwards, mixed up. This falls in with the idea of "satanic messages", ie if you play something backwards you get something evil. Like angels, turned backward are demons. Demons, flipped, are angels. The clock in s2 is also backwards; but if you flip it, it's magically corrected. The "sides", including heaven and hell, are reflections of each other. This slides in with the idea of multiple timelines and infinities, renewal and rebirth: the present and what we see has already happened many times over, and if you flip it around you get to see those reflections. Aka....run the show backwards and you get "satanic messages", the future and past. Flip the first season around, you get the story of creation. Second, you get the story of Jesus coming to earth. Third? Well, forward I'm guessing it's the apocalypse, a war they avert; so reflected, it's probably the Great War and the fall, aka it's the war they chose to have and consequences that weren't avoided.

I have a post on some of the scenes I've "run backwards". In it, God is a demon, she quite literally says "I don't see the point of morality", and we learn that Jesus and Satan swapped places.

>You are advocating for Her to control autonomous beings and make decisions for them.

Again, this is basic god apology. I said the opposite of that.

The classic line is "god the father", and "we are all his children". Because, the classic defense goes, we are far too ignorant to comprehend the ineffable.

Do you know who's far too ignorant to comprehend that drinking bleach is not a good idea? Because they literally know nothing?

Children.

The angels were created with zero knowledge of anything, except being told they can't disobey. They literally did not know what a "lie" is, or that anyone would do that. They had zero capacity to "think for themselves".

God let the angels drink bleach. Because, as classic apology goes, that's just life and it would be super duper sinful to interfere with that.

Everyone is born knowing nothing. What you teach people matters, because they don't know how things work. They do not have the concept of "lie" or "ambiguity" or "abuse", they lack the ability to think for themselves, until they are taught they can. But they can't do that if they're explicitly taught that thinking is wrong. That disobeying is....sinful. That asking for help from the person who created you, your Father, is batshit insane and a grievous sin to be harshly punished.

You stop an infant from drinking bleach because that's common sense and the most basic level of care required. You put up a sign on a bridge that's out or on electric fences because.....people do not know and can't be expected to know the bridge is out or that they're going to get shocked. Because providing information is the basic level of care required. If they go ahead and drive off the bridge anyway, they did actually choose to exercise free will. But they can't make that choice if you don't tell them. If you neglect them.

It's not autonomy. Not giving people enough information to make their own choices is neglect. Like a dealer who won't tell you the rules. Explicitly who god is.

As I said, dictatorship and neglect are two sides of the same nasty coin. Neither are acceptable, and defending neglect as "respect" isn't either. But they're a false dichotomy, there are other options beyond those. Defending neglect as care is classic god apology. It is literally the "problem of evil".

The Bible is the word of god.

Ergo, in GO, the Bible, which is the word, is not canon.

It's balderdash. Piffle.

In GO, there's also the quite literal Word of God as stuff she says. We know she's been absent for almost all of eternity; there is no word of god. She left quite soon after laying down the Great Plan.

The Great Plan, which is the word of god....which is poppycock.

Death of the author means you ignore what god thinks, you make your own decisions. God doesn't control you, and should not control you. God is irrelevant. You must kill the author to achieve this, and make yourself God in her stead. That's called heresy. It's what Satan tried to do in his rebellion, the war in heaven.

Hail Satan, hail yourself, depose god and change the story.

And if errors are truth....misspelling isn't an error but seeing the truth among the lies. It's not wrong, it's just not quite right yet.

And if errors are truth, inconsistencies are too. I think the first version, like with the first Anathema drawing in s1 vs the one we see when Aziraphale opens the book, are the "lie". In order to have an error, you must first have the original, against which the error is measured and discovered. So the first is the lie, the following errors are closer and closer to the truth.

That's why there's those infinity symbols, and that's why it looks like there's timeloops: we HAVE been around the block multiple times, because in order to correct an error, you must first make it. Just like humanity has done through all of time, scientifically: the sun doesn't go round the earth, but you have to try something to understand the world around you, how things work, even if you're wrong. You can always....fix it later. Except your next attempt isn't guaranteed to be any better, any more true. Knowing what's wrong doesn't tell you what's right.

And if the world is based on lies, if sin is therefore the default state not because sin is evil but because being wrong is how everyone starts out? Sin isn't actually bad. You're supposed to sin, it's expected.

The demons aren't evil, they had been or are closer to the truth than anyone else. Evidenced by their inability to spell. This is why we haven't learned anything about the War and the Fall, it would give the game away, and we the audience would not have gone through "sin". Would not have learned that being wrong isn't bad, it's expected.

Literally expected, in the sense that that's god's game. You are supposed to defy her, sin--because sin is an attempt to be better than god.

What's the point of the game? To learn what's right. Because when god put the apple in the garden, that was the apple of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Knowledge of what's right. Meaning...god lacks that knowledge, she's wholly amoral and not at all omniscient. God lacks even the most basic sense of fairness, which even babies and animals have. Hence her game to "figure it out". God's writing herself fiction in the same way we use it: to explore what things mean, what's right and wrong. To get other people to figure it out for her.

Catch is, her fiction is our real lives. Just like Crowley and Az were treating Soho like dolls on a game board. It's not harmless fiction when you apply it to real people.

An iteration of god's game is our actual history. I think Crowley remembers echoes of the past iterations, if not complete full memory of them. Those echoes are what we see as inconsistencies in the show.

And if the first version of a thing is a lie, then the "future" inconsistencies are actually better. This is the opposite of the church's claim that changing things is evil, because god....doesn't play dice with the universe.

I've always thought that seeing the fly enter the box was meant to signal to us that Gabriel was not carrying the fly in the box, therefore the box may have contained something else. Did the something else get absorbed by the fly (which is a container)?

It does imply that the box was not carrying the fly. I don't think he loses his memory until after a time in the elevator--eyes appear to still be purple on the CC. The CC shows him struggling to turn the box over to write on the bottom, then the next shows it as if it's light, then we see him at the elevator where he takes the matchbox out of it and it's still heavy through the end of the CC.

No exactly, but it could lead him there. Have you read the metas from @vidavalor that has written some about Gabriel, and his personal friendship with Azi and the knowledge that he has about the relationship between Crowley and Azi And the protection that he has given them thru the ages. The fly is also in one of those metas, are very really interesting

Yeah Gabriel is acting a part he does not want to play, just like Crowley and Az must. He's known about them, and frankly I think he's always trying to avoid "doing his heavenly duty" aka taking action against anyone for sin. We see him playing the idiot in the Job flashback....so that he can let the kids live. The only time we see him actually angry is when he's got to obliterate Az at the end of s1, because he can no longer weasel out of having to mete out "justice". He is angry because he does not want to kill Az, but he has no choice.

He has to trumpet the party line but he does not believe in it. If he does not know about it then he need not do anything.

So if all his Gabriel-ness is in the fly, I think that fly literally has a mind of its own, just as Jim has a different mind of his own. Jim isn't just a body, he's the factory reset, he does have a mind of his own but I think angels were originally created to be trusting and to obey. Part of the point of god's game is to see if they can defy their programming. She literally set them up to fail, and wants to see if the impossible is possible: being someone else. Because if you are created to obey, can you defy that? Does that make you a different person, because that's what "sinner" as an epithet is, that's what eternal damnation means? Kicker is, if angels were originally created as trusting, god has already made them defy their programming: can you take an innocent person and make them participate in evil? What does it take to corrupt someone, so that they actually think their actions are still just? And then of course, can you do it again in the other direction?

First came the corruption, the quite literal original sin, of putting obedience over morality and labeling that a "higher calling", the "greater good". Then comes the ironic redemption: can you defy your obedience programming and learn to trust yourself over others? Trust in who you are and what you believe?

Which is all to say: yeah, the fly led him to Aziraphale, because the fly IS Gabriel. Jim followed the fly because he's a factory reset angel at that point, built to trust and obey, aka blindly follow orders. An actual "innocent baby".

Gabriel isn't split in S2, I don't think. Not really. His memories are blocked, not erased. The Fly is... I think it's like... think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself. The trauma of what happens blocks his memories. I don't actually think he got amnesia from putting his memories in The Fly; I think he got it from what happened to him. His behavior during the week is consistent with trauma-induced retrograde amnesia. Basically, his mind sought to protect itself so it threw up a wall around everything traumatic and kept him from being able to access that information, even thought it was still there. Gabriel's trauma was all-encompassing so it took his whole identity away as to remember that would be to remember what happened.

Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like. His anxiety spikes when the angels are there because there is a part of his mind that knows who they are and he is freaking out because they tried to kill him and are now in his safe space. It just won't tell the rest of his mind why he feels anxious around them because that would be to remember the trauma and he can't. He is calmer around Crowley and Aziraphale, whom he went to instinctively because his mind knows that they are safe. His mind won't let him remember who they are because to do that would be to remember angels and demons and things associated with his trauma but it lets him recall the way to the bookshop because that's the place to go to be safe.

We see that he can have memories without context long before The Fly gives him back his memories in full. He knows "Everyday" and there's a suggestion he recognized Crowley as Bildad the Shuite without the Heaven/Hell context of it during the miracle to keep him safe. When he's talking with Crowley later in the season and feels comfortable, he remembers more-- the matchbox and even a bit of the trauma for the first time with the "institutional problem." All of this was in Gabriel's mind all season before he opened The Fly. He just couldn't access it but not because he didn't have The Fly-- because his mind was protecting him.

God is the one who tells us that she's playing an ineffable game of her own devising. She calls herself a dealer who won't tell you the rules, etc. That's called horror. And she's clearly amused by it. God is an actual demon by nature, as opposed to the other demons who are forced into terrorizing people.

>What if anything that's happening is the fault of The Metatron-- an evil angel telling everyone that he speaks for God when he really can do no such thing?

I think the Metatron is indeed Lucifer, but that's because Jesus is a horror just like god herself, and he and Lucy swapped places after the fall. Just like A&C have been swapping places, playing for the other team. Literally and figuratively. Because Jesus is a horror who loves running hell and Lucifer is the "good guy". Lucifer played Jesus on earth, he's the one who died on the cross. The Satan we saw in s1 was Jesus putting on airs.

>God can do nothing about any of it because if She intervenes, She's robbing all of Her creations of free will. If even one of them doesn't have it, none of them do.

This is the problem of evil. We have seen that standing by and doing nothing is treated as immoral. Futzing around worrying about the consequences to yourself or burbling about how to justify it does not excuse inaction. If the worst of the demons would intervene to help people, and god would not, then the worst of the demons is infinitely morally superior to god.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

Much as any other game we ourselves play, much as any other fictional story we tell about serial killers and chainsaw murderers....she set up the rules. She set up the game. Fictionally enjoying a chainsaw massacre is fine, because it's not real. As we have explicitly been told, these are real people and you can't treat them like blorbos. Which circles back around to the nature vs nurture, the "rules are reality"....

>Or, God didn't actually program anybody. What if God loves Her creations and gave them free will and dominion over their universe?

I said "program" specifically because that's what rules=reality is. Does it matter if you innately create someone who is unable to obey, vs telling a completely naive person that they can't disobey? It's what we do to children: expect them to obey, hit them when they don't, regardless of who's in the right because children have zero ability to judge for themselves or to fight back. Indeed, "fighting back" is punished by being hit more. Simply "talking back", even when the child is in the right, is punished. You cannot question anything, because that's called disobedience, disloyalty, treason--that's the fall.

Might does not make right. Rules are not reality. But that's what we teach, and that's what people do not question....because questioning reality is treason. Change is not possible. Might makes right means that what the mightiest wants, she gets, and that's what makes reality. You can't change that until.....you have your own house and make your own rules, which isn't actually changing the status quo at all because now you're the embodiment of might makes right.

Tons of feudal fiefs mean you are the king in your domain, and you don't change a single thing about how stuff works that makes you king. Because the rules were already established, that nobody can question those above them.....so as much as you tell yourself you created Eden for your underlings, if they can't leave, if they believe they aren't allowed to question anything---that's not all the different than every other fief lord. How are your underlings to know you won't hurt them just like everyone else would for being treasonous? That's literally what "god is testing me" means. None of them respond with "she's evil and this is wrong". Because loyalty tests, shit tests, are considered perfectly fine, because might makes right and we can't question her. So....obviously.....anything god does is the highest of morality and she deserves to be abusive, because dontchasee it's not actually abuse, you deserve it. Just like Job.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

That's the ineffable game. Will anyone throw caution to the wind and break the system? It's great entertainment. Tell people it's impossible, because you made the rules like that, and then see if people will cause an apocalypse--that's what upending the system IS--to.....just to talk to you.

So yeah, god is cheering on her own chainsaw massacre victims. She's got the chainsaw. Just like we cheer on fictional people in horror movies, but listen, they're not real, and we created that story. We are the fictional serial killer. God did the same thing....except with real people. She created a horror game with real people, she's the one chasing them down to kill them. She will not stop, she will go ahead and kill them. She's the knife at Issac's throat, but this time she does not tell Abraham to stop.

Under might makes right and the rules are reality, that means everything that happens to you because you can't stop god--and no one can stop her--is your fault and you deserve it. Like Job said. If you do not fight back, if you do not win, you deserve it, and it's not abuse, it's "edification", suffering makes you a saint. If you're not a saint, then clearly you just need to suffer more.

>God never says there's an Ineffable Plan-- She says there's an Ineffable Game. A game means everyone has free will & is making their own choices. It's Heaven that's trying to tell everyone that they're doing the will of God but God herself is saying go live free so that's why I trust Her more than The Metatron. :) I know, there's so many theories-- it's great fun!

But rules are reality, might makes right, and so anything god says is treated as immutable reality. We see this a lot in Star Trek with the "vulcans never lie/you lied/no, I implied or made an error". Except god does lie, because she told everyone she doesn't--that's what "don't question me" means: she is never wrong. Which is a lie.

God wrote the Great Plan. With the intent that it be carried out. To see how people act--again, she's the chainsaw serial killer. It is not mercy if she does not kill you, it's just serial killer behavior. Mercy requires that you believe you deserve to die, that she's right to torture people. She told people that the plan is reality, deliberately deceiving people.

Who has free will when you're told something is immutable reality? When the rules say it's not, and rules are reality? Unless you want to die--and nobody ever chooses death, do they? so predictable--you cannot fight. Nothing changes. You can't do anything. Because you will get caught, god will know because she said she has omniscience, you can't get away with it, you can't overthrow god under might makes right. Fighting immutable reality means you die, means you deserved eternal torture. Means you were wrong to do it.

And again, if everyone has free will and these are real people, what does it say about god that she sits back and allows all this? Deliberately deceives them and does not correct them? Is she just too stupid to understand that's what she's doing? We don't even tolerate that from toddlers. She cannot be both that stupid and omniscient. She also cannot be called benevolent. It's outright neglect. Toddlers also have "free will" but if your parents go "oh well, he's drinking bleach, freeeee willllll" that is called abuse through neglect and you lose custody. If god is lord our father, then at the very least hold her to the standards we expect of even the most incompetent parents.

>The Fly is… I think it's like… think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself [...] Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like.

It is a depiction of trauma, yes, but the reason isn't "this is ptsd" in universe. If you take files off a computer, you can still access them if you go get the external drive. The fly is a container, storage, and he can access that with great effort. But his head isn't built for that anymore--you can't just plug in any drive and expect it to work, a floppy disk doesn't fit into modern computers. You can still get the info off it with great effort, but it'll be corrupt. You have to access it correctly or you lose everything. Doing it with great effort results in partial or corrupt access.

He could have also chosen which memories to keep, which to shunt to the fly. He didn't keep "all the angels shouting for joy", he seems to have only kept his song. Factory reset, with a few exceptions. Wipe the drive. Except the fly isn't actually a computer so having "leaks", or the fly/aka Gabriel choosing to back port some more info can happen.

Gabriel is a stand in for Christ this season (the role swaps around, but mostly it's him). In the bookshop attack, it's the harrowing of hell; when Christ died, his body didn't go to hell but his spirit did. That's the split: it's why the demons reject Gabriel (not literally, metaphorically) and it's why Crowley is the one who saves the people and goes up to heaven. Jim is the body, the fly/Gabriel is the soul, and Crowley is the divinity.

I think that's also why Jim tries to kill the fly. They are not completely separate things; what your body does affects your soul, vice versa. If you kill your soul, you get to live free of sin when it goes to hell and you stay behind. But giving that up means you don't know who you are, you live in ignorance. Ignorance is bliss only if what you don't know doesn't affect you. What you don't know can still kill you, as with the dealer won't tell you the rules or even let you see at all.

>And FYI-- I'm really excited to find someone else who also thinks that Gabriel knew Aziraphale was lying in the Job minisode and went along with it because he could get away with it since Crowley and Aziraphale had given him a way out of killing the kids. 😊

She's using tongue-in-cheek humor to describe free will. There is no Ineffable Plan-- there is an Ineffable Game. The Game of Life requires active participants who have free will. She can't tell them that they do or else they wouldn't actually have it, would they? So, it's something of a game. It's definitely not a plan. The game is everyone figuring out for themselves that there is no Ineffable Plan and that they have their own selves and own senses of morality to answer for. There's nothing horrific about it-- it's delightful, imo. She's verbally winking at the audience while describing it. It's the same sense of humor She shows throughout her narration. Ask why God is narrating Crowley & Aziraphale's story in the first place? She clearly loves them and wants them to be well. How do you square things like the nightingale ending of S1 with the idea that God is a villain?

<<I think the Metatron is indeed Lucifer, but that's because Jesus is a horror just like god herself, and he and Lucy swapped places after the fall. Just like A&C have been swapping places, playing for the other team. Literally and figuratively. Because Jesus is a horror who loves running hell and Lucifer is the "good guy". Lucifer played Jesus on earth, he's the one who died on the cross. The Satan we saw in s1 was Jesus putting on airs.>>

Respectfully, we're now at the 2/3rds mark of the show and if they wanted to lay the groundwork for something like what you're talking about, we'd have seen evidence for it already. I don't disagree that both Satan and The Metatron are evil. I think that's kind of the whole point-- the angels aren't all good and the demons aren't all evil. I hear what you're saying about an element of swap, though, in parallel, and perhaps I could tempt you with the theory I've written up in different ways in a couple of posts where the end of S2 is Aziraphale being tempted by Satan who is appearing as The Metatron because that's who can offer Aziraphale the job he thinks he needs to keep Crowley safe?

<<This is the problem of evil. We have seen that standing by and doing nothing is treated as immoral. Futzing around worrying about the consequences to yourself or burbling about how to justify it does not excuse inaction. If the worst of the demons would intervene to help people, and god would not, then the worst of the demons is infinitely morally superior to god.>>

To clarify: for any other being in The Universe, standing by and doing nothing would be morally indefensible. For God, standing by and doing nothing *is doing something* because She's the creator of everyone. She has the power to either make everyone do her bidding or to give them all free will. If She makes them all do her bidding, none of them are living free and She has enslaved all of her people. Why would She want to do that? She loves them. She wants them to live free but that's something that, as every adult knows, you've got to figure out for yourself. No one else can tell you how to live. If God were to intervene with even one person, she'd be suppressing that person's free will and, just by doing so, would be creating a sense of Ineffable Plan that She does not believe in because it robs all of Her creations of free will. If one of us is not free, none of us are free. God supports freedom so She lets us have dominion over the universe because it's ours, not hers. That's what allows her creations the ability to be free to be who they are. That's the only way God can love and She's doing it well, if you ask me.

<<That's the ineffable game. Will anyone throw caution to the wind and break the system? It's great entertainment. Tell people it's impossible, because you made the rules like that, and then see if people will cause an apocalypse--that's what upending the system IS--to.....just to talk to you.>>

She didn't make the rules-- the angels did. We make messes of our own devising. God isn't responsible for them-- we are. If we want out of them, we have to figure that way out ourselves. You might be feeling run down sometimes and always in the same daily round... you might find yourself stuck in traffic in the highway you created. It's up to you to blow up your halo, use your resources, lean on one another for support, and get yourself out of it. That's what the Ineffable Game is-- having free will to make your own choices and live your own life. God doesn't know if the world will come to an end. She doesn't know if Armageddon will happen because it hasn't played out yet. It's not up to Her whether or not it does. It's up to Her creations. The way to stop Armageddon is them figuring that out and She can't tell them or else she'd be exerting her will upon them and taking from them their learn and grow and be themselves and be free.

<<But rules are reality, might makes right, and so anything god says is treated as immutable reality.>>

Well, She's also the theatrical device known as a "voice of God"-- a disembodied, omniscient narrator who tells the audience everything they need to know to understand the universe of a play or a teleplay. She teaches us how to understand language and gives us all the information we might need to know about how Heaven and Hell works and She's funny as fuck so, yeah, I trust her. A lot more than that dude who showed up and said "I speak for God!" when we've never seen a shred of evidence that he actually can. 😉

<<God wrote the Great Plan. With the intent that it be carried out. To see how people act--again, she's the chainsaw serial killer.>>

Says who? There's no evidence there is a Great Plan and a ton of suggestion that there *isn't* one. No one can tell you what it says. Beez and Gabriel don't know what it is and when Crowley and Aziraphale realized that in one of the big moments of S1, they all got one step closer to figuring out this is all a sham. None of the main characters have ever been seen talking to God about it. I don't think Gabriel or The Metatron actually can talk to God. There's a floating head who claims to be running everything and is about to be all "I am the great and powerful Oz!" in S3. They're all about to find out that no one knows how to chat with Frances McDormand because God isn't in charge of Heaven-- they are. The angels are going to take back Heaven from The Metatron, the whole concept of being a demon is going to be a thing of the past, and they'll all have to work together to figure out what they want Heaven to look like going forward. God isn't the villain-- She's proud of the main characters who are finding their way towards a better world.

<< It is a depiction of trauma, yes, but the reason isn't "this is ptsd" in universe.>>

All due respect: yes, it is. The point of the series is that the angels and demons are like the humans and the humans are like the angels and demons. Crowley and Aziraphale's PTSD is an ongoing plot point. Aziraphale went to the spot where he lost Crowley in Edinburgh during S2 to work on his trauma. Crowley dealing with the bookshop fire is actually what saved the bookshop during the attack because of the fire extinguishers. Anxiety, depression, and PTSD and the effects of those things are very common things woven throughout the story for the supernatural characters in different ways because that's the point of the story. It's to talk about the business of living, which is all the same, no matter what type of fictional being we're talking about.

<<Gabriel is a stand in for Christ this season>>

He's a martyr, I'll give you that much lol. Gabriel could stand to go 30% less hard on "nice to meet you, do you want me to throw myself in front of an angry mob for you or could we do friendship bracelets?" That's a feature of trauma, btw. See: above.

<<In the bookshop attack, it's the harrowing of hell; when Christ died, his body didn't go to hell but his spirit did. That's the split: it's why the demons reject Gabriel (not literally, metaphorically)>>

The demons couldn't see Gabriel because he was protected from darkness by Beez, Crowley & Aziraphale. The idea here is that the bookshop attack is Aziraphale having a mental health crisis. The bookshop has always been metaphorical for Aziraphale-- to the point that he even makes it a sexual metaphor with Crowley as well. To this end, who can get into the bookshop, how, and to what extent, represents the voices to which Aziraphale is listening or open to listening to at any given time.

A group of demons attacking the bookshop-- led by a demon played by the same woman who played the person within whom Aziraphale shared a mind and body in S1-- is then symbolic of a worsening anxiety attack. The season peaks with Aziraphale having let in everyone in the neighborhood, plus having Maggie and Gabriel under the same roof, plus having a coming out party of sorts for him and Crowley, plus nine other stressors at once and so the demons representing Aziraphale's inner demons show up in the midst of it.

The Devil in Good Omens is really just darkness. It's Satan, yes, and demons, yes, but metaphorically, it's not really that religious. It can be inner demons. It can be depression, anxiety, trauma, negative thoughts. That's what's at the core of the bookshop attack, imo.

Crowley takes out most of the humans because they all represent different aspects of things we use to keep the darkness at bay. Maggie and Nina and Gabriel gather up and use the fire extinguishers that they have from Crowley's trauma to protect the shop. The demons can only be stopped by Aziraphale taking off his halo-- which is around his head, a tight band, not above his head, so it's mental health related to the horrible perfectionism of being forced to try to be a perfect angel all the time.

The demons can't see Gabriel because the darkness can't get to him anymore because he's been protected by Beez, Crowley and Aziraphale. It's showing how the characters can keep one another safe and how taking care of each other is the way we make sure that none of us are left behind to get caught by "The Devil." On Good Omens, a fall can be the darkness of a mental health breakdown that leads to the darkness of the literal Devil showing up at your door but, in real life, the same ideas apply in a secular way as well.

Frankly your "God is good" is the standard religious defense of the Christian god. GO is a satire of all that, it's laughing at how ridiculous "but it's moral to let people do evil" is, because there isn't a binary between treating people like dolls you should have total dominion over, and letting your child eat bleach. Control vs neglect; neither are moral choices, it's a false dichotomy. You can help people without dehumanizing them. We do it every day. Only a dictator would go "you're on your own if I can't control you, this is generous of me and good for you". Aka: if you need help, clearly you don't deserve autonomy, yeah? Clearly there is no other option.

You're supposed to think God is good. "Supposed to" and "it's true" are not the same thing. God is good is the rule, not reality. God said is a rule, like simon says, it's not reality. Might makes right again. Really weird how "I did this one less than decent thing" means humans are evil and deserve hell, but for god "I could have been worse" is incontrovertible evidence she's morally superior. Instead of the threat and confession it actually is. A promise not to drown everyone again isn't kind, it's deranged. You know what kind of person says shit like that?

Evil doesn't exist, it's a choice. It's every choice. A person is not capable of being only good or only evil, that's what shades of gray is. Every choice can be different. God herself is not an exception, she too chooses. And she lies about it.

GO is a satire. They aren't going to skewer every other part of religion but then turn around and go "except god, she's impeccable". God is the entire basis of the religion, it's not exempt. It does not get special treatment. Only religion claims god is literally above everything, only religion judges their neighbors for things they excuse in their dictator. That what Go is laughing at. You can and should judge the almighty, Crawley. An ineffable plan that does not exist is not evidence of good, it's a different kind of immoral: did you plan to let your kid eat bleach or did you sit there with glee claiming you wanted him to do the right thing and couldn't possibly tell him anything because that would "violate autonomy"? Again, ignorance isn't bliss: that's the point of the apple.

And if god gave up the knowledge of good and evil, to make that apple? You can't expect god to have knowledge of good and evil. Can't give up your cake and have it too.

I've always thought that seeing the fly enter the box was meant to signal to us that Gabriel was not carrying the fly in the box, therefore the box may have contained something else. Did the something else get absorbed by the fly (which is a container)?

It does imply that the box was not carrying the fly. I don't think he loses his memory until after a time in the elevator--eyes appear to still be purple on the CC. The CC shows him struggling to turn the box over to write on the bottom, then the next shows it as if it's light, then we see him at the elevator where he takes the matchbox out of it and it's still heavy through the end of the CC.

No exactly, but it could lead him there. Have you read the metas from @vidavalor that has written some about Gabriel, and his personal friendship with Azi and the knowledge that he has about the relationship between Crowley and Azi And the protection that he has given them thru the ages. The fly is also in one of those metas, are very really interesting

Yeah Gabriel is acting a part he does not want to play, just like Crowley and Az must. He's known about them, and frankly I think he's always trying to avoid "doing his heavenly duty" aka taking action against anyone for sin. We see him playing the idiot in the Job flashback....so that he can let the kids live. The only time we see him actually angry is when he's got to obliterate Az at the end of s1, because he can no longer weasel out of having to mete out "justice". He is angry because he does not want to kill Az, but he has no choice.

He has to trumpet the party line but he does not believe in it. If he does not know about it then he need not do anything.

So if all his Gabriel-ness is in the fly, I think that fly literally has a mind of its own, just as Jim has a different mind of his own. Jim isn't just a body, he's the factory reset, he does have a mind of his own but I think angels were originally created to be trusting and to obey. Part of the point of god's game is to see if they can defy their programming. She literally set them up to fail, and wants to see if the impossible is possible: being someone else. Because if you are created to obey, can you defy that? Does that make you a different person, because that's what "sinner" as an epithet is, that's what eternal damnation means? Kicker is, if angels were originally created as trusting, god has already made them defy their programming: can you take an innocent person and make them participate in evil? What does it take to corrupt someone, so that they actually think their actions are still just? And then of course, can you do it again in the other direction?

First came the corruption, the quite literal original sin, of putting obedience over morality and labeling that a "higher calling", the "greater good". Then comes the ironic redemption: can you defy your obedience programming and learn to trust yourself over others? Trust in who you are and what you believe?

Which is all to say: yeah, the fly led him to Aziraphale, because the fly IS Gabriel. Jim followed the fly because he's a factory reset angel at that point, built to trust and obey, aka blindly follow orders. An actual "innocent baby".

Gabriel isn't split in S2, I don't think. Not really. His memories are blocked, not erased. The Fly is... I think it's like... think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself. The trauma of what happens blocks his memories. I don't actually think he got amnesia from putting his memories in The Fly; I think he got it from what happened to him. His behavior during the week is consistent with trauma-induced retrograde amnesia. Basically, his mind sought to protect itself so it threw up a wall around everything traumatic and kept him from being able to access that information, even thought it was still there. Gabriel's trauma was all-encompassing so it took his whole identity away as to remember that would be to remember what happened.

Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like. His anxiety spikes when the angels are there because there is a part of his mind that knows who they are and he is freaking out because they tried to kill him and are now in his safe space. It just won't tell the rest of his mind why he feels anxious around them because that would be to remember the trauma and he can't. He is calmer around Crowley and Aziraphale, whom he went to instinctively because his mind knows that they are safe. His mind won't let him remember who they are because to do that would be to remember angels and demons and things associated with his trauma but it lets him recall the way to the bookshop because that's the place to go to be safe.

We see that he can have memories without context long before The Fly gives him back his memories in full. He knows "Everyday" and there's a suggestion he recognized Crowley as Bildad the Shuite without the Heaven/Hell context of it during the miracle to keep him safe. When he's talking with Crowley later in the season and feels comfortable, he remembers more-- the matchbox and even a bit of the trauma for the first time with the "institutional problem." All of this was in Gabriel's mind all season before he opened The Fly. He just couldn't access it but not because he didn't have The Fly-- because his mind was protecting him.

God is the one who tells us that she's playing an ineffable game of her own devising. She calls herself a dealer who won't tell you the rules, etc. That's called horror. And she's clearly amused by it. God is an actual demon by nature, as opposed to the other demons who are forced into terrorizing people.

>What if anything that's happening is the fault of The Metatron-- an evil angel telling everyone that he speaks for God when he really can do no such thing?

I think the Metatron is indeed Lucifer, but that's because Jesus is a horror just like god herself, and he and Lucy swapped places after the fall. Just like A&C have been swapping places, playing for the other team. Literally and figuratively. Because Jesus is a horror who loves running hell and Lucifer is the "good guy". Lucifer played Jesus on earth, he's the one who died on the cross. The Satan we saw in s1 was Jesus putting on airs.

>God can do nothing about any of it because if She intervenes, She's robbing all of Her creations of free will. If even one of them doesn't have it, none of them do.

This is the problem of evil. We have seen that standing by and doing nothing is treated as immoral. Futzing around worrying about the consequences to yourself or burbling about how to justify it does not excuse inaction. If the worst of the demons would intervene to help people, and god would not, then the worst of the demons is infinitely morally superior to god.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

Much as any other game we ourselves play, much as any other fictional story we tell about serial killers and chainsaw murderers....she set up the rules. She set up the game. Fictionally enjoying a chainsaw massacre is fine, because it's not real. As we have explicitly been told, these are real people and you can't treat them like blorbos. Which circles back around to the nature vs nurture, the "rules are reality"....

>Or, God didn't actually program anybody. What if God loves Her creations and gave them free will and dominion over their universe?

I said "program" specifically because that's what rules=reality is. Does it matter if you innately create someone who is unable to obey, vs telling a completely naive person that they can't disobey? It's what we do to children: expect them to obey, hit them when they don't, regardless of who's in the right because children have zero ability to judge for themselves or to fight back. Indeed, "fighting back" is punished by being hit more. Simply "talking back", even when the child is in the right, is punished. You cannot question anything, because that's called disobedience, disloyalty, treason--that's the fall.

Might does not make right. Rules are not reality. But that's what we teach, and that's what people do not question....because questioning reality is treason. Change is not possible. Might makes right means that what the mightiest wants, she gets, and that's what makes reality. You can't change that until.....you have your own house and make your own rules, which isn't actually changing the status quo at all because now you're the embodiment of might makes right.

Tons of feudal fiefs mean you are the king in your domain, and you don't change a single thing about how stuff works that makes you king. Because the rules were already established, that nobody can question those above them.....so as much as you tell yourself you created Eden for your underlings, if they can't leave, if they believe they aren't allowed to question anything---that's not all the different than every other fief lord. How are your underlings to know you won't hurt them just like everyone else would for being treasonous? That's literally what "god is testing me" means. None of them respond with "she's evil and this is wrong". Because loyalty tests, shit tests, are considered perfectly fine, because might makes right and we can't question her. So....obviously.....anything god does is the highest of morality and she deserves to be abusive, because dontchasee it's not actually abuse, you deserve it. Just like Job.

>She's cheering on our main characters as they fight the system.

That's the ineffable game. Will anyone throw caution to the wind and break the system? It's great entertainment. Tell people it's impossible, because you made the rules like that, and then see if people will cause an apocalypse--that's what upending the system IS--to.....just to talk to you.

So yeah, god is cheering on her own chainsaw massacre victims. She's got the chainsaw. Just like we cheer on fictional people in horror movies, but listen, they're not real, and we created that story. We are the fictional serial killer. God did the same thing....except with real people. She created a horror game with real people, she's the one chasing them down to kill them. She will not stop, she will go ahead and kill them. She's the knife at Issac's throat, but this time she does not tell Abraham to stop.

Under might makes right and the rules are reality, that means everything that happens to you because you can't stop god--and no one can stop her--is your fault and you deserve it. Like Job said. If you do not fight back, if you do not win, you deserve it, and it's not abuse, it's "edification", suffering makes you a saint. If you're not a saint, then clearly you just need to suffer more.

>God never says there's an Ineffable Plan-- She says there's an Ineffable Game. A game means everyone has free will & is making their own choices. It's Heaven that's trying to tell everyone that they're doing the will of God but God herself is saying go live free so that's why I trust Her more than The Metatron. :) I know, there's so many theories-- it's great fun!

But rules are reality, might makes right, and so anything god says is treated as immutable reality. We see this a lot in Star Trek with the "vulcans never lie/you lied/no, I implied or made an error". Except god does lie, because she told everyone she doesn't--that's what "don't question me" means: she is never wrong. Which is a lie.

God wrote the Great Plan. With the intent that it be carried out. To see how people act--again, she's the chainsaw serial killer. It is not mercy if she does not kill you, it's just serial killer behavior. Mercy requires that you believe you deserve to die, that she's right to torture people. She told people that the plan is reality, deliberately deceiving people.

Who has free will when you're told something is immutable reality? When the rules say it's not, and rules are reality? Unless you want to die--and nobody ever chooses death, do they? so predictable--you cannot fight. Nothing changes. You can't do anything. Because you will get caught, god will know because she said she has omniscience, you can't get away with it, you can't overthrow god under might makes right. Fighting immutable reality means you die, means you deserved eternal torture. Means you were wrong to do it.

And again, if everyone has free will and these are real people, what does it say about god that she sits back and allows all this? Deliberately deceives them and does not correct them? Is she just too stupid to understand that's what she's doing? We don't even tolerate that from toddlers. She cannot be both that stupid and omniscient. She also cannot be called benevolent. It's outright neglect. Toddlers also have "free will" but if your parents go "oh well, he's drinking bleach, freeeee willllll" that is called abuse through neglect and you lose custody. If god is lord our father, then at the very least hold her to the standards we expect of even the most incompetent parents.

>The Fly is… I think it's like… think of his mind like a computer and The Fly as a flash drive containing all the files he backed up onto it. The files are also still in his mind itself [...] Throughout the week, he exhibits behavior that is like what someone who has suffered trauma they can't recall is like.

It is a depiction of trauma, yes, but the reason isn't "this is ptsd" in universe. If you take files off a computer, you can still access them if you go get the external drive. The fly is a container, storage, and he can access that with great effort. But his head isn't built for that anymore--you can't just plug in any drive and expect it to work, a floppy disk doesn't fit into modern computers. You can still get the info off it with great effort, but it'll be corrupt. You have to access it correctly or you lose everything. Doing it with great effort results in partial or corrupt access.

He could have also chosen which memories to keep, which to shunt to the fly. He didn't keep "all the angels shouting for joy", he seems to have only kept his song. Factory reset, with a few exceptions. Wipe the drive. Except the fly isn't actually a computer so having "leaks", or the fly/aka Gabriel choosing to back port some more info can happen.

Gabriel is a stand in for Christ this season (the role swaps around, but mostly it's him). In the bookshop attack, it's the harrowing of hell; when Christ died, his body didn't go to hell but his spirit did. That's the split: it's why the demons reject Gabriel (not literally, metaphorically) and it's why Crowley is the one who saves the people and goes up to heaven. Jim is the body, the fly/Gabriel is the soul, and Crowley is the divinity.

I think that's also why Jim tries to kill the fly. They are not completely separate things; what your body does affects your soul, vice versa. If you kill your soul, you get to live free of sin when it goes to hell and you stay behind. But giving that up means you don't know who you are, you live in ignorance. Ignorance is bliss only if what you don't know doesn't affect you. What you don't know can still kill you, as with the dealer won't tell you the rules or even let you see at all.

>And FYI-- I'm really excited to find someone else who also thinks that Gabriel knew Aziraphale was lying in the Job minisode and went along with it because he could get away with it since Crowley and Aziraphale had given him a way out of killing the kids. 😊

I don't think it would pass it at all. An angel and a demon drinking wine and shaking hands and plotting together to raise the kid to be normal and neither evil nor good? Heaven & Hell would destroy C&A for merely one of those, let alone the rest. They were also wasted and flirting five minutes before that. Just the fact that they feel comfortable enough to get drunk... they had candlelit wine in 1941! They have a sense of privacy in the shop otherwise what's the point?

What they actually said was "It would be a shame if I failed", and then if Az went and made sure he failed, then the kid would not turn out either good or evil, just normal. That passes muster, because all of those things are true. It WOULD be a shame for Crowley if he failed, if Az won then the kid would be good, and if neither of them won then the kid would be normal. Those are all literally true.

The secondary conversation is that "it would be a shame if I failed" is double speak, meaning, enthusiastically, "Please make me fail". Just like the wall slam in s1 wasn't Crowley being angry, but flirtation: what he says and what he means are not necessarily, if ever, the same thing. What someone else thinks he said and what he actually meant are generally different: banana fish etc, people hear what they want and not the magic spell he's casting. Lying in plain sight, lying with the truth.

I'm also not arguing there is no protection, I'm saying it's based on social convention. Belief in the rules. Don't have the authority. Not actual physically impossible for anyone to show up. It's simply rude, and rule breaking, which we know both sides don't do in a way they can get caught at.

Which is exactly what we see when the demons/angels pop right into the shop in s2, and when Metatron isn't invited in either but yet strolls right past all these things. Because he's literally a higher authority, and rules don't matter to him.