Glandular Fever

It’s just that total commitment to saving Earth, no matter what it might do to her, no matter how it might make people see her. Ughhh.

So I think that the TRUE tragedy of Project Hail Mary (movie) is that Eva Stratt, a German woman, wasn’t the one sent into space alone with man-made amnesia, possibly convinced that she’s losing her mind, to make first contact with the rock-spider-alien.

(it’s also a play on “I think, therefore I am,” which is amusing in the context of figuring out that Eridians are intelligent beings and/or that Rocky lost his mind after being alone on his ship for 46 years. “Es glaubt, es spinne.” = “it thinks, therefore it is spider” but also, “oh mein Gott it is losing its mind.”)

His true hero’s journey/redemption arc in space remains incomplete when he risks his life to gather the Adrian taumoeba. Again, it’s an act of great bravery - but not true, full bravery. The bravery of sacrifice. He’s already committed himself to a suicide mission, death isn’t a big fear factor here, you could almost argue he’s motivated both by a desire to save Earth + Erid *and* by the sunk cost fallacy, its far far too late for him to back out. Even knowing Rocky’s fuel could potentially get him home - that doesn’t matter if he doesn’t get the sample, he’d still die, just slowly and painfully of starvation and *maybe* at home.

Grace’s true “redemption,” comes when he turns around to save Rocky *with* the memories of his fear and cowardice, knowing that he’s giving up returning to a home that *can* be saved, and choosing to be brave - truly brave, not for himself, but for Rocky (he’s found somebody to be brave for, as Yáo suggests, at the beginning of the film). It’s also brilliant because it shows that beneath his fear Grace always has been a good person, he just needed and extra kick to be brave enough to do good even if it is to his own detriment. Being good wasn’t the issue - we know he’s good, that he can be brave because of it, I just don’t think that Grace fully realised that before the end of phm. Like I said, he’s not motivated purely by the sunk cost fallacy or being stuck between a rock(y) and a hard place. He genuinely wants to save Earth and Erid, he wants to honour Yáo and Ilyukhina, he wants to help this alien that is all alone and from a different star system. Even on Earth, he was willing to follow Stratt into saving the world. But he is also a bit of a coward - and he is most definitely proud.

Pride and cowardice go hand in hand - I don’t mean that they are his only or even defining traits, but for Grace I think they are strong traits that he is both aware and deeply ashamed of. I think he needed to make choices he made in space without his memories to prove to himself that he’s a good person, despite what his flaws have lead him to believe, before he could be a brave person.

I personally believe that this means they do have free will, and that the ineffability of it is both a narrative device to make you think about what you’ve read AND a tongue-in-cheek prod at the un-falsifiable-ness of religion.

But it’s a huge issue with modern media - the idea that in order for a woman to be on par with a man she has to meet society’s expectation for the baseline “masculine,” traits you need to be strong.

it’s also an issue because I think a lot of the traits associated with being male/masculine are not unique to that gender-role but are ascribed to it because men (cis men specifically) have historically been the only social class perceived as being “strong,” outside of the “strong matriarch,” archetype but that’s rooted in more gender role nonsense around motherhood.

And THEN there’s the issue of: not all women are feminine at all! This isn’t necessarily a positive or negative character trait. But in fiction it’s something that is so difficult to represent, although that can be balanced out by just… having more than one woman in your cast, and at the very least more than one TYPE of woman.

This is also why a lot of modern male characters are celebrated for possessing femininity that female characters might be ridiculed for or boxed in by. This is seen as a clever subversion of gender roles, because it’s not something that the men are trapped by. So much female representation has been marred by sexist under and often overtones that many modern “subversions,” are usually those that end up reinforcing negative stereotypes around femininity, and trapping the women they’re representing in a space between the real world and the fictional ideal that built them.

Most of the men and women in my writing act in quite similar ways, outside of their own personal quirks, but I really want to try to push myself to include some more traditionally “feminine,” qualities for all of them, because I want femininity to be something that can be associated with strength. And even then - not all characters need to be strong to be worthwhile, we see too many “cool,” unflappable, unstoppable characters nowadays it’s nice to see normal-ish people in fantastical situations for once.

In European folklore (beauty and the beast, the frog prince) characters often change to learn a lesson that typically involves humility, chastity or charity. I would argue that Crowley and Aziraphale, through their time on Earth, have already undergone such a transformation. Sure they’ve learnt to, “sin,” (or at least Aziraphale has), but largely they have learnt to love and appreciate the world around them, with less arrogance than those above and below. Here they’ve (somewhat) learnt humility, they both demonstrate charity at the airbase towards Adam and humanity writ large in avoiding the apocalypse, and I don’t really believe that chastity is something either one of them has ever worried about. These actions are all a product of their exposure to humanity - it has, as written in the book, made them more human and thus allowed them to act in more legitimately compassionate and, “good,” ways. They have undergone metamorphosis.

Even if analysed from the perspective of Hell with their “sinning,” this still works - after they defy Heaven at the airbase they live forevermore amongst mortal men in sin as a “punishment,” for this rebellion, an association which has already made Crowley better at tempting and Aziraphale more gluttonous and slothful. These are not necessarily contradictory results either, as where the book differs from folklore morality is that the main “lesson,” that A and C are taught is to be more human, which includes all of humanity’s “good,” and “bad” traits. Again, they have undergone a metamorphosis that has changed them to better represent the “lowly,” creatures that they were (unintentionally) forced to live amongst by Heaven and Hell. So, From both a Heavenly and Hellish lense they can be argued to have “changed,” for the better - which is the beauty of the message of the book and its satirical commentary on politics and human nature.

Which all goes to say - they don’t need to fully “become,” human by the end of the show, because that defeats the point of them learning this, “lesson.” By which I mean they’ve already *learnt it.* You could argue that it’s the final stage of the metamorphosis - letting go of their divine power and becoming fully human, after 6000 years of “readying,” themselves, but that doesn’t work unless they retain all of their memories, because otherwise that completely wipes the lesson itself from their mind! The idea of them meeting and becoming human (and that it’s implied that they find each other in “every universe”) to me speaks more of the Greek divine-punishment angle, rather than a satisfying or “sweet” ending.

Arachne, a weaver, is turned into a giant spider because she dares to challenge Athena’s weaving prowess. Galanthis is turned into a weasel by Hera for facilitating the birth of Heracles and attempting to save his human mother. They are both examples of human characters who are not explicitly morally “wrong,” in their conduct - their only crime is defying the Gods. This is somewhat reflected in the ending of Go3 - Crowley and Aziraphale challenge God’s plan and as such are disintegrated and turned into humans, living out a similar story over-and-over again across universes, yet unable to save their original universe as a reminder that nothing, not even and angel and a demon, can defy divinity and come out unscathed. The issue is, this ending is portrayed to a degree as more of a bittersweet tragedy, or in some cases a triumph, than a true tragedy.

Certain legitimately “bittersweet,” tragedies such as the Children of Lir and Io feature human characters being turned into animals (“lesser creatures”) for protection. The animal itself specifically correlates to the moral of the story and the moral character/narrative purpose of the individuals - swans for the innocence, nobility and beauty of Lir’s children, and a cow for the inversion of Io’s beauty and her role as Zeus’s consort (I’m not as familiar with the story so forgive that lacklustre analysis, but you get the gist).

One could argue that A and C being turned into humans is a similar form of divine, “protection,” their celestial/occult love being so strong that it is literally etched into the fabric of every new universe, but I don’t think it works either (or sends a very strong message). In both Children of Lir and Io - those who undergo metamorphosis do so as a result of either divine power beyond their control or as a last resort against evil. They have no agency, to the point where they quite literally lose their humanity and human free will as a result of the machinations of OUTSIDE FORCES, which contradicts the message of good omens the book and s1 of the show.

In s2 and s3 of Good Omens, some of their more “human,” characteristics are dialled down - especially in s3, where both of them are almost completely isolated from humanity and are its *sole* protectors in the final hour. But this isn’t done intentionally. Or rather it is - but not for any effective narrative-serving purpose. It’s the result of rushed production and a show that should never have been extended past its first season without a clear, structured story. Post s1, Azriaphale and Crowley are at once de-humanised in their own duo-bubble, and then shown to still be perfectly capable of making human-decisions without human-influence. This is done for the “drama,” to make their relationship feel fragile and exciting, as opposed to worn-in and known, and to put them at the centre of the show’s universe so that the audience has a titular couple to follow.

The problem with this is that it forgets the actual human element of humanity - that to be human is something that BOTH Crowley and Aziraphale have to *learn* to become, and that as a result they aren’t all that separate from. Showing them un-learning their lessons from s1, and indicating that a lot of their more “human” traits developed as a result of *each other* rather than *actual people* makes it seem like they never actually learnt a lesson on humanity, from humans, at all. After s1, it feels as though retroactively there was no true metamorphosis before they are turned fully human (they don’t once consult humans about what to do about the second coming, which you might think was something they should have learnt to do after s1, humans hardly have any influence in the story’s outcome), even though the audience was strung along to believe that there was (what we do see in s1, Maggie and Nina’s storyline) - so the final, “true,” metamorphosis STILL doesn’t feel earned!

Because while it’s repeatedly inferred that Heaven IS just as bad as Hell in their disregard for humanity and their rigid definition of what biblical, “good,” is - the way in which they operate is not always inherently “bad,” either. Their ultimate plan for Armageddon and second coming might involve the total destruction of humanity - but in the meantime, the general notion of spreading peace and good will among the masses is a pretty difficult ideology to refute, no? If we look at the direct inspiration for the (admittedly loose/subtle) representation of Heaven in the book, it can be assumed that it is largely a stand in for capitalist Western powers (specifically the US) during the Cold War, and the intense/zealous beliefs of modern fundamentalist Christians. Hell acts in opposition to this force as a representation of Communist powers (Russia) during the Cold War and, quite literally, Hell. The insidious thing about all of the highly morally questionable (horrendous) things that the US has done over the last century, is that it’s also done a lot of good. Heading the UN, miraculous medical development, a nation that (at least 50 years ago) was a leading force in the establishment of the Western Democratic World Order that, while certainly not perfect, was (and in some cases is) still predicated on trying to do good. While the nebulously evil perception of “communism oooh scary” from the time (and today) is not an accurate representation of communism itself, Communist dictatorships such as Russia were and are pretty objectively, well, “bad.” Not in their totality - but given the position Russia was in economically, on the global scale it’s activity was more related to competing with the US for geopolitical resources than furthering itself or its people on as wide a scale as the US was able. While fascinating academic discourse and development was occurring in Russia at the time, it was also a dictatorship, and much of the progress being made was belied by this fact.

Obviously there’s a lot more complexity that I’m not going to delve into in a good omens post - but the thing is, the US (like many other Western countries built on a history of imperialism and off the back of the slave-trade) has managed to get away with so much Bad Shit because it’s also done a lot of Good Shit that it has used to cover up the Bad Shit. That’s not to say the system doesn’t need a reboot - CLEARLY it does and it clearly did back in the Cold War, because funnily enough doing Good Shit DOESN’T erase the Bad Shit. Especially if you’re still actively doing it.

And if the, “good shit,” that the US and other Western nations have done might just happen to only really benefit themselves well… hey, at least someone’s benefitting from it, right? (Heaven and ultimate Armageddon) But it can be hard to see the forest from the trees, and also hard to completely divorce yourself from an ideology or set of principles related to a nation that you thought was doing good, and in some ways has done good. Or at least, that’s the side of it you’ve grown up with.

In the same vein, just because the Russian government was more obvious in their Bad Shit, it did not mean (and does not mean) that the average Russian citizen is inherently evil.

Similarly, one of the reasons walking away from any Christian demonisation can be difficult - is that despite all of the Bad Shit that can be interpreted from the bible and spread by Bad People using religion as their excuse… there’s also a lot of Good Shit. Love thy neighbour (unless they fall into a specific group of people we don’t like), Pray for the sick and injured, Do Good (whatever that means), Lead a life of discipline, Be grateful, Be kind, etc etc etc. While a lot of religions, especially those that fall under the Abrahamic umbrella, have been used as a tool for control and Bad, faith itself is not an inherently Bad thing to have. Kind people will interpret the word of a kind God, just as cruel people will interpret the word of a cruel one.

So it can be hard, no matter all of the bad, to walk away from a religion that ALSO preaches peace and love (not matter how hypocritically). A major point of Aziraphale’s character is that while his “grumpiness,” is his own trait that has blossomed as a result of his time amongst humanity - so is his true, genuine kindness, divorced from Heaven’s more superficial divine kindness. These facets of himself are separate from Heaven - but I think his kindness is actually something that simultaneously strengthens his faith in Heaven’s purpose AND gives him the impetus to doubt it.

Aziraphale has his own sense of righteous justice (I talk about this a lot more in a different post so I won’t get into it here), but ultimately he stands against Heaven and Hell to preserve a humanity he’s come to love - for his gluttony and his greed, and his KINDNESS. But before this, why would a creature so kind want to totally question the motives of a creator and a Heavenly body that ostensibly wants the same things as him? And that, given that he’s never given them a reason to, has never turned its divine wrath on him specifically?

You can rationalise why humans suffer - he does so himself, when he describes to Crowley the “benefits,” of social inequity being that a person born in the most dire circumstances has the most brilliant chance to prove themself! In the book it’s presented a little more complexly than the show - Aziraphale isn’t necessarily saying that the suffering itself is good, but that it gives the individual suffering a good old chance to bring themselves by the bootlaces and show the world what-for!

Obviously this isn’t exactly a morally sound way to look at the world, but that’s the distanced, Heavenly perspective on it that he is able to “logically” maintain so long as it isn’t in direct opposition to his own personal values - because he believes that his personal values ARE Heaven’s values (by and large). Aziraphale only seriously questions Heaven when he is directly presented with either suffering (actually having to kill Adam himself, the end of the whole world, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc) or what he perceives as superfluous/overtly hypocritical (the design of the human airway, for one).

Aziraphale is kind, he is neurotic and vaguely guilty at all times, but he is also shrewd. This is why he comes to question Heaven, when confronted with both its hypocrisy and his own. You can see this in his conflict over whether to contract the Metatron or Crowley over Adam’s location. His knee-jerk reaction is to contact Heaven - not necessarily because of an all-encompassing blind faith, but because of the last dredges of hope he holds that he and Heaven are both truly working for, “good,” despite its ruthless nature. Which he immediately and OPENLY regrets when the Metatron comes down and disabuses him of that notion.

It’s “easier,” in a sense for Crowley to question both Heaven and Hell - because he hasn’t had the privilege of benefiting from Heaven’s literal good graces, whereas Aziraphale HAS. But it’s not only Aziraphale’s Heavenly privilege that makes him put more trust in Heaven than Crowley has in Hell (he’s a demon, he’s not supposed to trust anyone!), it’s the fact that this Heavenly good favour has actually allowed him to do good.

As relatively unimpressive as he is at “thwarting evil,” Aziraphale is clearly fond of using miracles to wipe away human pain (just as much as Crowley secretly is). And while Crowley is actively stopped from expressing the “better parts,” (the more human, kinder parts) of himself by both Heaven AND Hell, Heaven unintentionally enables Aziraphale’s kindness - and consequently unintentionally enables his humanity, which makes it more difficult for Aziraphale to disentangle the two.

So I don’t think that Aziraphale has any blind faith in Heaven - I think that he questions, and feels guilty for questioning because Heaven as a body, while committing numerous atrocities and restricting Aziraphale somewhat in “how,” he is supposed to help people, has never really stopped him from helping them, either (until Armageddon). In fact, it has often “helped,” him, which means that Aziraphael mixes up his own nature with that of the Angel he is meant to be on Heaven’s accord. I think this is true for both the book and the show, but I think that generally Book Aziraphale is more aware of the Heaven-Humanity conundrum than Show Aziraphale, at least outwardly.

Only consuming media that includes borderline to full-blown gay porn isn’t healthy, nor is it healthy to expect every close same-sex OR opposite-sex relationship to end in romance/sex. Shipping is great, but not all of it is good/healthy, and just because you ship something doesn’t mean you should see it becoming canon as a given. I personally believe we need more close friendships in media in general, between women and men and woman-woman pairs especially! But we do also need more mainstream queer media - people can desire both, so I see where a lot of that push to see two main characters with lots of chemistry end up together romantically comes from. I’ve loved the influx of queer media over the past few years! Seeing myself and people like me represented on the big screen is beautiful, and I think it is very important that big mainstream TV shows have main queer couples who just happen to be queer, it normalises it and shows that there’s more to us than just the funny side character or being the token gay couple or the tragic ending. So yes, I understand why queer shipping is so prolific and it’s not a bad thing, it’s very sweet to see fandom spaces create beautiful stories based off of books or shows they love. It’s when they blur the line between fiction and reality, and when the love for representation becomes a fixation on the sexuality of the characters itself and on a very specific demographic of character that it rubs me the wrong way.

yes this post is about Aziraphale Good Omens.

John Good, if you will.

(Crowley is John Omens).

I think that the notion that Aziraphale loses a lot of agency in the show is much easier to grasp from the get-go. Even in season 1, his increased reliance on Crowley’s cunning and actual magical prowess puts him a step behind his companion. What makes it more obvious is exactly that - it’s a step behind, while Crowley’s character shift is a false step “forward.” The fact that it has a negative impact of the story is obscured by the fact that Crowley’s added backstory feels like character development, even if its development that undermines the humanist principles of the original good omens.

In the book, as far as I’m aware, he was never able to stop time, he was never inferred to be an archangel, and he was never actually as totally, heroically, unquestionably devoted to humanity as show-Crowley. Does he love humanity? Yes. Does he also love causing a considerable amount of misery to befall the average person purely to humour himself? Yes, and he is very aware of the conundrum this presents. Book-Crowley is a coward - a snake! While he subverts the typical persona of a literal demon from Hell with his love for expensive houseplants and his lack of desire to actually, physically hurt people, he has to constantly rationalise the pain he does cause. Not because it’s his job - but because, to a degree, he enjoys it. Designing the M25 and tangling London phone lines for a day brings him joy in the action itself - he’s a mischief maker, it’s what he does. The subversion of his character comes from the guilt that goes with it, the kindness that makes him stick around at the end of the world.

His motive for stopping the apocalypse might vaguely include humans from the get-go, but an actual devotion to “protecting” them doesn’t really form until the end of the book, at the airbase, and evolves from a belief that is present throughout the book that the divine plan is, at heart, unfair.

Book-Aziraphale’s skepticism of Heaven seems less obvious than Crowley’s because he hasn’t been given as much of a reason to doubt - he never fell. Both of them possess strength in questioning their individual sides, Crowley just has a head start on questioning Heaven because he was actually kicked out.

In any case, the true courage of book Crowley comes from his fear. It might not be as obvious as Aziraphale’s more squirrelly, nervous mannerism because Aziraphale doesn’t have the benefit of shades and a well-cut suit. But Crowley’s fear, from the chapters in his POV, is actually far greater. Which is why it’s so incredible that he drives the Bentley through a wall of fire, gets to the airbase, and sticks around! Not because he’s always been that gallant, but because he hasn’t, yet deep down inside him (as Aziraphael says) that bravery, that nobility, is there.

Book-Crowley is slightly less embittered by his fall and his background - partly because it’s not so much of a focus in the book, partly because humanity has had the “opposite” effect on him that it’s had on Aziraphale, it’s made not only his kindness, but his (Crowley’s) softness and courage rise and come through the sorrow and the bitterness and the light sprinkling of evil. He’s still a tragic character, it’s hard for a fallen angel not to be, but the story is less about his tragedy and more about who it has made him after the fact.

He and Aziraphael teach each other lessons. Again, Aziraphale’s views might be coated in the moral high-horsery of Heaven from time-to-time, but at their cores they’re both good people, good friends (or…whatever they are), who engage on an equal-footing. Show-Crowley is a much more overtly *tragic* figure, who is still overcoming and in some ways in the midst of his own tragedy. A powerful (presumed archangel**) angel, Star-maker, cast down from Heaven and forced to watch all that he created shrivel up and burn in the apocalypse, while the still-an-angel he loves is torn from him by the same Paradise that cast him out. Show-Crowley is more powerful than book-Crowley and, if not more jaded, post s1 he is certainly more morose.

Book Crowley is an optimist, he has to be, for all his fear. Show-Crowley, even in s1, seems too world-weary for this optimism to take hold. It heightens the gap between he and Aziraphael and, frankly, makes for a less interesting character resolution.

Tragic-Crowley (who seems out of place in a story that otherwise fails to impart that it’s characters (bar Crowley) are actually IN a tragedy) sacrificing himself for a new world, not even the world he’s from, seems heart-wrenching in the worst way possible. He’s given up - there’s quite literally no hope from the world he comes from, so he and Aziraphale, whose relationship has been burnt beyond repair, must die with it.

Think about a similar ending with book-Crowley. He’s just found Aziraphale, after having been separated in a gut-wrenching way, and now he’s faced with the end of the world. This whole time he’s been doing his best to fight against that very scenario - he’s an optimist, after all, but now he and his best friend are faced with one last impossible decision. Does this not feel like more of an appropriately, actually tragic ending? That they’ve gotten to this point despite fighting against it with all the optimism and hope in the world, as desperate to protect humanity as any regular human would be, not some heart-broken, former-angelic overseer?

Show-Crowley had already given up, book-Crowley likely wouldn’t have, heartbroken as he was, and neither quite frankly would s1 Crowley. That version sacrificing himself at the end - after being portrayed as a coward who learns to be brave, rather than a martyr who always has been, would feel much more impactful imho. I’m not saying it’s my favourite ending - and I do think book/s1 Crowley would definitely advocate for the old world to stay, just without angels and demons. But even a slight tweaking of the character would have made it far more effective.

This being said - similar to Sheen’s performance as Aziraphale, David Tennant is an amazing actor and plays the role he has been given excellently. You can see the stark difference between angel Crowley and Demon Crowley and, as a character seperated from book and s1 Crowley, I can certainly see the appeal of such a world-weary, tragic figure, just not one that comes at the expense of the story itself and to the detriment of the development and agency of other characters.