Everything is broken up. And dancing

So not long ago I listened to an episode of Ditch Diggers* where authors @tkingfisher and Mur Lafferty were discussing "it was all a dream"/universe reset endings, and why they felt so cheap and unsatisfying / why writers are advised to avoid them. 

And their point was, these endings feel unsatisfying because they tell the reader: all that stuff you just read? those epic adventures? everything that happened to the characters? Yeah, none of that mattered, it didn't happen, none of it was real. 

But if none if it happened, why did the reader waste their time reading about it? Oh you were emotionally invested in those characters? Jokes on you for caring, because none of the growth or danger they went through mattered. It was all a dream. The universe reset. None of that happened, actually.

It feels like a betrayal. And it is a betrayal of the contract the writer makes with the reader. All the time and emotional investment you put in to the story and the world is wasted, because none of it was real. I think that’s really the core of the issue with the ending of the GO finale. S1 told a beautiful, hopeful story about a bunch of ordinary people (and an extraordinary demon and angel) standing up for what they thought was right. Trying to stop the world ending even when it seemed hopeless. They stood up against powerful, corrupt systems that seemed insurmountable, and they managed to win. The world was saved. It’s a beautiful story and one we need now, when we live in a time where corrupt systems seem more powerful and unbeatable than ever! 

And we saw a beautiful, queer, and deep relationship built between Aziraphale and Crowley through history, despite everything keeping them apart.

The writers decided to throw all that out the window. Because if the world is reset and Heaven and Hell never existed, then nothing in S1 happened. Adam's choice to defy his Destiny and Satan is meaningless, because it didn't happen. There is a new Adam Young who was always the son of Arthur and Deirdre young. Newt and Anathema, Shadwell and Tracy, all those supposed "enemies" who found a connection in the person they were told to hate, who stood up to save the world, well that didn't happen either.  Aziraphale and Crowley, who we watched build a relationship over 6000 years despite incredible danger, who stood up to save billions of people (and dolphins, and gorillas) from pointless violence… all that history is thrown out in favor of two random humans. Sure, their relationship may be cute, but those are not the blorbos we spent so much time invested in. Aziraphale and Crowley died. And so did everyone else on Earth. Even if they were replaced with close copies, they died. They didn’t get a choice in that. Neither did the 20 million angels and demons in Heaven and Hell. A story about preventing the end of the world and the injustice of a universe slated to end before its time... gave us an ending where they destroy the whole universe. And the writers have the gall to pretend this is our happy ending?

The South Downs ending feels hollow because it’s not Aziraphale and Crowley finally getting to rest after 6000 years, finally building a life together. It’s just two random humans who sort of look like them.

There are sad or bittersweet endings that can still feel satisfying if they meet the characters' needs. This ending does not do that. “Everyone dies” is not a solution to anything. It’s a tragedy. So yeah, I do not accept this ending as canon. I am ignoring S2 and S3. As far as I'm concerned the story ended with the Ritz and to the world. I will keep writing and producing art of them from that moment. Because their story did matter. To many of us. And they deserved a real ending, not a “nevermind, none of it happened.”

The more I think about it, the more I think fuck this “real world” decision and its bullshit explanation. The implications are awful if you think about it for longer than a couple hours and it borders on character assassination.

Nevermind the fact that Crowley chose to erase himself and Aziraphale from existence, which has been talked about to death as unfair and unnecessary, it isn’t even the just thing to do. This wasn’t a noble sacrifice for the good of humanity, it was a defeatist act by someone who had lost all hope and is just finally too tired for the messy work of making things better. Aziraphale and Crowley weren’t the ones who wiped the slate clean, sure, but they were explicitly given the offer to put it all back. They chose not to, and to me that complacency matters.

It was them who pointed out that tossing life away, whether it be one person or the whole world, to create some spiffy, new and improved thing is cruel. It doesn’t matter that the humans set to die in God’s flood turned out “wrong”. They’re here anyway and deserve to keep living and making mistakes. Nevermind the Heaven-approved children Job will be rewarded with, what about his children now? Are they so worthless as to be interchangeable?

Heaven and Hell don’t understand humanity because they don’t see billions of individuals, they see the singular, conceptual entity of human-kind meant to serve its purpose in the great plan. Aziraphale and Crowley saw Anathema, Adam, Madam Tracy, Shadwell, Nina, Maggie, Mrs. Sandwich, etc. God makes it clear this new world would be a reset, and they still go through with it without a passing thought for the loss of those people.

So here’s an unfortunate reminder of the past. I’ve cut a screen grab of it rather than reblogging, because fuck that guy he doesn’t get another reblog out of me. I’ve also cut out the original questioner because I don’t think it’s fair to unnecessarily expose them even if the post is public.

I used to get so many notifications on people liking this reblog. Then when the allegations came out (which if I remember correctly was only days later) they thankfully trickled away. I got another one just now and it reminded me when I heard Aziraphale say pedometer in the finale it frankly felt like such a gut punch. Which is a shame considering it was during in what was, in my opinion, one of the best scenes in the finale.

It’s proof that what we got truly was all NG’s work and not something that was re-written as so many had assumed. The fact that this moment was also something preserved out of everything that had been cut, a thing specifically mentioned by NG and probably one of the last snippets we got before he was cancelled and thrust from this platform, is yet again another telling sign of how much the two other writers probably upheld his story and vision.

Yup, apparently I’m still not done being sad and angry about it.

I need to keep reminding myself of that. Because this outcome was so unimaginable to me. In the 990 days I spent waiting for the finale I never once considered this possibility.

This is the ending that we got. I'm getting closer to accepting it, but I'm not quite there. That's why I'm making this post - not to rile up the fandom that I know is divided. I love the positive takes too, keep em comin'. I just... need a little more time to accept that this is what we got.

it forgets that the christian cosmology was the setting, told through corporate satire, not the villain. even God wasn’t an active tyrant; she was an absent CEO, leaving individual contributors like Aziraphale and Crowley to realize their job descriptions were irrelevant to the company's bottom line anyway, so they coasted by on minimum effort

Again with another Good omens sketch bcz I miss them already:<<

I have a feeling that beneath the little halo on your noble head There lies a thought or two the devil might be interested to know You're like the finish of a novel that I'll finally have to take to bed You fascinate me so

to me, it's a fundamental rule of craftsmanship: if I am forced to do the heavy lifting in my own mind just to make the story work, the text has failed to earn it's keep. I can cherish a broken story , but it remains objectively broken nonetheless