Coxy77

If artists are the backbone of a fandom, then you all are the muscles. Connecting everyone and everything. Spreading fun and whimsy. That’s real neat, I think

A meta-fic on the the frustrations of beloved characters committing pointless suicide

https://archiveofourown.org/works/86982406

So as most of you likely know by now I was not a fan of the Good Omens finale in the slightest. When the prompt “salt” came up for a guess the author game in an anti-season 3 server, I saw a fun opportunity to rant about this horrid trope used in two series I love. Then after publishing I became aware of this quote.

Because that’s not Aziraphale. That’s Crowley.

The way they played each other in the body swap was so great - the tiny little tells mounting up to the reveal, the way they parodied the best of each other in their portrayals.

And we were all staring over and over at Aziraphale’s strange smile in the lift at the end of s2, wondering what it meant.

Had they done it again? Was there something we hadn’t seen, some sleight of hand moment where they switched? Was that Crowley going up to Heaven to avert the Second Coming? The plot device was right there, right? And you had two fantastic actors who could have pulled it off so satisfyingly that it would have been the perfect prestige to the magic trick the end of s2 seemed to be setting up.

But the bookshop in my brain is still open. Only on weekends, or the occasional open stint on a quiet midweek day or two, but Whickber Street still bustles around it. It still exists, and is still tended to by a fussy, soft bookseller and his angular, hot headed, but incredibly loving husband. No one was invited to the wedding, needless to say. They just kind of showed up wearing rings one day, and no one had ever thought to ask when they tied the knot, or in fact if they ever even did.

And within its walls are a stock room, still painted yellow; a bedroom, now shared by a snoozing demon and a reading angel, on the weekend and those hazy midweek days; and a desk which never gets dusty or messy.

There’s also a cottage in the South Downs, with a large green house and vegetable plots which miraculously never deplete, and roses which bloom year round; there’s an armchair which has a worn down left arm cushion, from where a demon drapes himself over his angel more often than he sits on the matching chair across from it; a bedroom, shared, again; and the sounds of two lives well lived, infinite happiness and love beyond measure echoing within its floral, wallpapered walls.

Nanny with Her Parasol

(a Good Omens parody repaint of The Woman with a Parasol by Claude Monet)

The right mixture of magic, whimsy and comedy that, I believe, Sir Terry Pratchett would have approved of. Aziraphale loves Crowley, but when he tries to show it, it rains fish in Grimsby, makes interesting crop circles in Oxfordshire, causes frogs to rain from the sky.

“Crowley was back in Italy. He was standing in a studio, breathing in marble dust and gazing up at a vast hunk of rock from which the folds of a robe were still in the process of emerging. He took a swig of Chianti, handed the preliminary sketches back to Bernini and said, “I dunno, Gian. Just my two florins, but I’d go with more ecstasy in her expression. Make it clear.”

Or less clear. Thanks to Crowley’s intervention, Bernini’s St. Teresa of Avila had been the subject of irreverent ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ jokes long before Harry ever met Sally. It was one of those tiny, blink-and-you-miss-it touches of soul tarnishing that had always delighted Crowley in the past.

Only now the joke was on him, because if anything Bernini had downplayed what it felt like when an angel singled you out for heavenly rapture. He heard Aziraphale’s wings open in slow motion – thwooooooooooooooshhhhhh – as he fell forever onto the warm grass, belly up, spine arched, arms outstretched. Love. Love. Oh God, so much love. He swore he could feel his ribs creak as it swelled inside him and realised he’d made a terrible mistake, because he was going to burst. Actually burst, and worse – he was going to enjoy it.

He saw himself through Aziraphale’s eyes, a skittish zoetrope of self-portraits dancing around the inside of his head. He saw himself laughing, drinking, singing, offering delectable bites on the end of his fork, and all through it the blinding love of this heavenly creature sizzled through his demonic flesh. He could smell burning.

Well, I’m fucked, he thought and then his overheated brain shorted out and everything went dark.”