Aziraphale's Defence Attorney

Like, two friends lost loved ones to suicide in the last year. I know depression can be fatal but it's not what I wanted to deal with in my fantasy love story.

It was poorly written, the characters were badly characterized, plot points from S2 were simply abandoned and in their place poor substitutions were hackneyed in (looking at you Eternal Flame!) Yes let's let Michael - who apparently DOESN'T have free will? - destroy the Book. Let's have Crowley grab her arm but then let go almost immediately so she can continue destroying the Book. Great!

Meanwhile entirely useless side quests were forced in. Like the end of the War, not even the whole War or the Fall, just the end of the War where our heroes aren't even given original dialogue. Just more call backs to remind us all that they can't be together.

Look. I like Slorch the Vile as much as anybody but we did not NEED that. It was a fun thing for Michael Sheen to do, bless him, but it didn't add any relevance at all. The same with Crowley losing his powers, the Bentley, and the bookshop. Brian Cameron plot why? Why was so much time spent on this idiot gangster? Where is my optimistic, imaginative demon?? Why is he rolling (sluttishly) in a dirty alley!?

Hey? What happened to Gabe and Beez? Obviously they couldn't get those actors but we had zero in story explanation either! Sloppy!

God, the reason and driving force of all of it; the Creation, angels and demons, the temptation of humanity, then BAM destruction. Humanity learned nothing evidently, and had no importance other than to be part of a plan that only God knew and apparently didn't care about.

Why do this? Why show Aziraphale and Crowley pining and yearning and finding ways to be together anyway and loving each other anyway.....and it all meant nothing. This is a comedy!

Season two was stuffed chock full of Clues and references to secret knowledge and side quests and plans that meant NOTHING! Something besides hiding Gabriel was going on and several people have written extensive metas on it.

I'm very very tired of being handed half ass endings. Asa and Anthony are ADORABLE. Of course they were. But they DO NOT have the Ineffable Husbands memories. If you wiped most of my mind and sent me off to live a new life, is that really me? No.

I know a lot of the same things have been said. So here's more of that I guess. 🥂

Crowley asks Aziraphale to help him. Stop them. Begs him. Says he needs him. 

But Aziraphale says there’s no point. Heaven and Hell can’t change. It’s the divine plan. And walks away from him. Then turns back from the door and grabs Crowley by the lapels and kisses him. Expecting Crowley to change his mind. Leaves.

But Crowley decides to go, determined to try and avoid the next disaster. And he does. He works hard in the disgusting place he despises to avoid another war while Aziraphale back on Earth spirals, loses the shop to mafia, sleeps next to Crowley’s car that’s gathering dust. 

3 years laters Crowley shows up, looking for lost Eric or somebody and comes across Aziraphale. Dirty and drunk, asleep in alley. Oh but first Mrs Sandwich stops and gives Crowley shit about the whole street falling apart because of him. 

I want to write something thoughtful but before I do, I need simply say: fuck that noise.

Good Omens is a queer allegory, and if queer people excel at anything it is existing despite the bigotry in the world. We have always been here. We always will be. Despite what religious and corporate over Lords desire. Queer joy is an act of rebellion in our current world, and is one that should be embraced rather than met with the message of the only way we can find happiness is to exist in a perfect world.

Aziraphale and Crowley both know that, too. I cannot believe our guardian angel and demon could co-exist with us for thousands of years and come to the conclusion that utter destruction is the only way to find your joy.

Enjoy the ending if you want. I am happy for you to do so. But don't go spouting destructive nonsense like this is the only path.

And, now that we have the full show canon, it's apparent that this is what the primary show writer intended to convey. So I can't get mad at people for seeing that.

Tbf, I'm sure plenty of people who liked this note in S2 draw the line at how it played out in S3. Even if it's not my favorite way of looking at the story in total, it's a valid interpretive lens on S2 that Crowley, who has been forcibly ejected by heaven, is showing Aziraphale, who is still somewhat (and increasingly reluctantly) affiliated with heaven, another perspective.

But this is a far cry from S3's message that a) Crowley is solely responsible for any courage, understanding, or growth on Aziraphale's part; and b) it is fitting for Aziraphale to cede control over his own fate, even to the point of death, to Crowley.

And it has been heartening for me to see that even people who have a more critical take on Aziraphale than I do think the S3 message is bonkers.

I hear you thinking "but S2 does show that Aziraphale has influenced Crowley!" And I agree that the joint magic trick theme shows that Aziraphale has helped Crowley learn to trust. But that, to me, is outweighed by moments like Crowley introducing Aziraphale to food, Crowley playing Socrates in Edinburgh, and Crowley scolding Aziraphale for hosting the ball.

I see tiny indications of what was to come in S1, but overall it feels like the S1 narrative actually respects Aziraphale as a subject, an individual in his own right, rather than Crowley's puppet, and shows a more mutually beneficial partnership between them. While S3 turns Aziraphale into an object through which Crowley realizes his One True Heroic Purpose.

And to the extent that S3 does prove Aziraphale right (via some terribly written dialogue) by confirming that Crowley is good and that it would be wrong to run off to Alpha Centauri while humanity suffered, it never feels like victory or vindication for Aziraphale. Instead his correctness on these points merely confirms that Crowley is the new Messiah.

Sam Vimes, who was an alcoholic but found a reason and a purpose.

Sam Vimes, who was drawn from the bottle to a crime.

Sam Vimes, who stood up and became a leader.

Sam Vimes, who failed and would have given himself to the Gonne, but was saved by a myth disguised as a man.

Sam Vimes, who realised he was wrong and risked it all to uphold the humanity of what everyone else saw as a piece of clay.

Sam Vimes, who chose to chase a criminal and in doing so stopped a war.

Sam Vimes, who died in that other reality.

Sam Vimes, who killed a werewolf with his bare hands to protect the woman he loved and the officers he was upholding,

Sam Vimes, who wanted to beat a torturer to death but saw himself staring across the room and across the years and had mercy.

Sam Vimes, who saw a murdered (goblin) girl and said "NO"

Sam Vimes, who knew "perks" were part of life, and comforted the girl who had killed her family unintentionally with them.

Sam Vimes, who saved the blacksmith who wanted to defeat him.

Sam Vimes, who showed me that even though I saw myself as a failure, as fallen - I could still change and make change.

I’m a bit slow on the uptake, I know, but I just realized what pisses me off so much about asanthony. I’ve been trying hard not to hate them because they are just fanfic human AU and I love human AUs. I fall in love with all those characters immediately and find the similarities and differences with the true Aziraphale and Crowley very interesting and warming. But the difference between all those other human AUs and asanthony is that all those other characters are not trying to replace the true Aziraphale and Crowley. They live their parallel love stories without anything to do with our boys. But these new usurpers came here and stole their happy ending and that breaks my heart (and angers the crap out of me). It’s not their fault, they were just written this way, but I can't help but resent them for it. Maybe I’m being petty, but everytime I see them it makes me feel sick. And sad. And so pissed.

(And I hate their hair so much! Aren't there hairstylists in that crappy new universe? Don't they have hair products? Mirrors at least?)

I'll spare all of us a picture of them, but here, take a happy aziracrow instead.

What kind of name is Asa? (I'm spanish, you know what Asa means in spanish? Handle, grip) Why didn't they let Asa be the owner of the bookshop? He's just an employee! And he's still working for fucking metatron, for someone's sake! With all this, that hair and that golden chain on his neck he's the saddest, most pathetic caricature anyone could make of Aziraphale.

And Anthony Crowley (at least they allowed his right name) is just sad. Why are his books so bad he doesn't sell any? Why is he an author in the first place? He's a professor, why be also a bad author with unsellable books? Need I remind you that Crowley wouldn't be a bookseller even at gun point? Why those clothes? He could be at least a bit fashionable.

Someone else (I don’t remember who, sorry) pointed out, and I checked just now to make sure, that during the swap, the people in the background are frozen. Crowziraphale stops time for the swap. When he says nobody is watching, that's what he means - not just humans, but Heaven and Hell as well.

(Link with timestamp right to the swap)

The miracle use on the other hand... now, the joint miracle tells us that Heaven doesn't exactly know what miracles are used for, or they wouldn’t have had to go down to investigate. Maybe the fact that Aziraphale used a miracle at all would show up in the files, but not what that miracle was?

Yeah I wonder how those photos worked. Michael clearly checked for the two of them together in public (and Gabriel didn't know they were meeting or he wouldn't have said over the sushi that 'it's a miracle he hasn't spotted you yet' or sth like that) and yet he dismissed it as unimportant too. Was Michael able to see and hear them? If they wished? Did Aziraphale know this was always possible and that's why he was always so cautious with his words in public? Nobody checks - until they do... But nobody suspected Aziraphale because he played a numpty very well.

Someone else (I don’t remember who, sorry) pointed out, and I checked just now to make sure, that during the swap, the people in the background are frozen. Crowziraphale stops time for the swap. When he says nobody is watching, that's what he means - not just humans, but Heaven and Hell as well.

(Link with timestamp right to the swap)

I’ve been more than two decades (20+years) reading Terry Pratchett. I’ve read the whole Discworld series several times. But not only that, I’ve read other series and solo books (Good Omens among them). If there is something that Terry Pratchett's books leave behind when you finish them is a feeling of fairness and hope. There’s always a satisfying ending. Even when tragedy happens sometimes (Spoiler: when Granny Weatherwax died I cried my eyes out for two days) there’s always a motive for it and it leaves hope behind (after Granny’s death, Tiffany Aching will lead the witches to a new future). There is always fairness in the end. The weak ones always get justice, even if they don't always get everything they want. The powerful don’t get away with their evil plans, but get thwarted. Don’t get me wrong, his books are not all happiness and flowers. He writes about hard topics (misogyny, trans rights, discrimination, racism, death, corruption…), his characters are in many cases troubled (Sam Vimes, Death). But there is always hope in the end. Things get better and, at the very least, there is fairness. And that fairness is a big part of the satisfying sensation you get after reading his books. Another thing to be said about his books is that they are always charged with big doses of morality hidden frequently behind a thin veil of misanthropy (humans will be humans).

I’ve also been reading Neil Gaiman’s books for more than 20 years (btw, fuck Neil Gaiman to alpha centauri and back). The sensation they leave behind in most cases is not a pleasant one, but of unease. There’s injustice, frustration or heartbreak in many of his books. They are much darker and unfair. And the morality in them is more nuanced.

That unfairness is the reason why I know the ending we got in go3 had nothing to do with Terry Pratchett. Nothing short of Terry Pratchett himself coming back from the dead, walking back the black sands of the Dark Desert to tell me personally that this was his desired ending, would convince me of the contrary. Suposedly gos2 and go3 were made to finish the story as Terry Pratchett had wanted, they were doing it for him and for the fans, but they couldn't have made anything less in common with Terry Pratchett.

This was no tribute to Terry Pratchett. This didn’t honour his legacy. To have his story, 75% of it written by Terry Pratchett, butchered and emptied of meaning, fairness and sense in this way is outrageous. Because not only it doesn’t make any sense, it negates everything the book and s1 teach us. The fate the characters, that Terry Pratchett created and loved, suffered was worse than anything we could have imagined (consensual murder-suicide is still murder-suicide). Not to talk about the fact that the universe created by Pratchett has not only been destroyed, no, it has been erased and it has never existed. They tried to erase Terry’s work.

I recon I’ve been played for a sucker. I wholeheartedly believed it was going to be okay. It never crossed my mind, even for a second, that Aziraphale and Crowley were not having their happy ending. Back in 2005 the authors said that Aziraphale and Crowley were in the South Downs. They had been talking about their whereabouts and had come to that realisation. When asked what were they doing in the South Downs NG answered simply that they were sharing a cottage. And some of you may argue that is exactly what happened in go3, but no. Two very nice, I'm sure, and physically similar men got to spend their retirement married sharing a cottage in the South Downs. And I’m very happy for that sweet couple, and that scene is so beautiful and warm and nice I want to cry remembering it. But those weren't Aziraphale and Crowley. Period. Aziraphale and Crowley were evaporated along with their whole universe and they have never existed. Their 6000+ years of love and pining and hiding and fighting for humanity just disappeared into nothing. And that, my friends, is not fair. As it’s not fair the fact that the abusers, Gabriel and Beelzebub*, got to live their happy ending and their love for a few years at least, while Aziraphale and Crowley never could (they had been 6000 years dancing around each other while Gabriel and Beelzebub just what? About 4 years). And it isn’t fair that god herself, the ultimate responsible for the abuse they had to endure, is the one cornering them to decide to agree to a murder-suicide and execute it too. While it’s not fair that the meaning of s1 was completely turned around and humanity, the world and the universe were suddenly not worth saving, too broken to fix.

And you know what else is not fair? To spend years (20 years more or less) saying that this story has a happy ending, a very specific happy ending, and then not only not delivering it but killing the main characters in the most OOC decission ever seen and destroying the whole universe. To have a comedy, turn it into a rom-com, and then a drama without any warning.

Terry must be turning in his grave. What a horrible “tribute” to his work.

*As cute as we want to make that couple be, we can't forget that both Gabriel and Beelzebub abused Aziraphale and Crowley their whole existence and were the ones judging them and sentencing them to death in s1. Have we forgotten the "Shut your stupid mouth and die already”?

Nothing else today. Just be kind to each other.

They tried to take away my love of human AUs with this. I have nothing against Asa and Anthony but they are not Aziraphale and Crowley as OP says. And I have always enjoyed the concept of Aziraphale and Crowley as the platonic ideal of two lovers who keep choosing each other against all odds. That they would belong to any universe we can think of. But I do feel like GO3 tried to ruin this. Maybe not entirely deliberately - maybe they really thought (that kind of) legitimising all AUs will be fanservice. But it's not. Not to me.

I haven't read that many Terry books. I am working on it. But I wholeheartedly agree that his message is always - things are hard and kinda fucked up but the only way forward is to keep trying and to keep choosing hope and belief in others. Destroying a universe is exactly what should have never happened.