荒海

Why was the whole thing framed as if Crowley was the - romantic and devoted one even in his pain because he kept an eye on the bookshop? Oh what noble sacrifice.

When Aziraphale was the one who gave up everything just so he could try and avoid their dying horribly (or living in a far worse way forever)?

Why was Aziraphale deemed the guilty one? Why did Crowley never as much as hinted at being sorry for leaving him for years alone?

What happened to Mr "I won't leave you on your own"?

Aziraphale succeeded and got not a single word of thanks or appreciation. No. He is constantly blamed and shamed and questioned and criticised. "And how's that working out?"

Wait...how is Crowley even keeping the bookstore running when he is miracleless??? Hell, he couldn't even keep his apartment, car or plants.

artblock is terrible

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Because there's this bit in the book where Adam and his friends are discussing angels and demons/heaven and hell through the lens of the Them and the Johnsonites, which I personally interpreted to be in support of this line of thought:

" Seems to me, " said Wensleydale, " that if you asked people in lower Tadfield, they'd say they'd be better off without the Johnsonites or the Them. " ( ... ) " but I bet they'd think it'd be a jolly sight less interestin' if we all weren't here. "

And it was, in my opinion, " a jolly sight less interestin' " for them to have simply removed angels and demons entirely. To have removed that bit of fantasy that made the Good Omens universe what it was. Its entire premise.

I would've thought the conclusion would be more along the lines of what's being said here. Re-emphasising agency to choose to make one's "own side" despite the influences of heaven and hell in their universe. (Which, were arguably not as big and overwhelming as they'd hoped for anyway.) (And wasn't that the joke? That no matter what Crowley and Aziraphale did to influence humanity, it didn't matter all that much, because humanity's capable of both great good and evil all on their own?) (I see arguments that they meddled in Maggie and Nina's relationship in S2 but Maggie and Nina didn't end up immediately together like Crowley and Aziraphale had hoped either. Doesn't that then also prove the lack of real influence angels and demons have on humanity?)

Here I'm talking about the agency of humanity, of course, but also of the other beings in that universe. Many of which were already breaking away from the pure black-and-white thinking expected of them (other than our main leads, there was Gabriel and Beezlebub, Muriel and Eric, etc.).

To quote another part of the book I think many have already pointed out:

Being a demon, of course, was supposed to mean you had no free will. But you couldn't hang around humans for very long without learning a thing or two.

This was in reference to Crowley. Why not applied to other angels and demons as well? I would've personally loved to see more supernatural beings hang around humans and learn a thing or two. The shenanigans that would've ensued.

Many people have written eloquently about how, since the book/radio drama/S1 all end happily with character arcs wrapped up, there is plenty of justification for taking them as one's personal canon. This is probably going to be my approach.

However, I do think there is justification in the structure of the show to consider each season as its own AU. I'm not saying you have to interpret it this way, just offering the possibility.

Season 1 begins with the OG wall meet-cute, which establishes A&C as a pair of slightly befuddled agents from opposing sides who have more in common with each other than head office. Of the three seasons, this one retains the most of the Cold War spy setting from the book, with them meeting in public places and expressing fear about getting into trouble with their head offices. Also, this is the only season that mentions the Arrangement, which is a concept that only makes sense if they both know that angels and demons are the same.

Season 2 introduces a new meet-cute that, to me, can be read as resetting the story into an AU about religious institutional trauma. The two angels are more like church friends, with one about to be ex-churched, and while the fear of their institutions persists, the conflicts between them throughout S2 seem more philosophical than S1's more practical and obvious emergency. In addition, among a number of moments that I find contradictory to S1, there is no hint of the Arrangement and generally A&C seem to lack the common knowledge and experience that I read them as having in S1.

Season 3 doesn't have breathing room for much of this kind of analysis, but the third meet-cute seems to launch us into a war AU with A&C as soldiers on opposite sides of an unbridgeable divide, who will never find more than a moment's peace together, which leads into their final decision. This is a huge reversal from S1, which showed characters successfully building relationships across their differences.

Chronologically, the only way I can make all three meet-cute scenes make sense in order is by assuming external manipulation. Their memories and/or their Book of Life pages must have been altered, or we must be watching them in different timelines or universes.

This is not the only issue I have when trying to consider the story chronologically. To me, the S1 flashbacks show a slowly developing relationship, allies to friends to lovers, over the centuries. The S2 minisodes disrupt that flow, with the Job flashback getting very intimate, then whipping back to a more distanced tone at the Crucifixion. And how do we get from Bastille Aziraphale, who is experiencing in real time what a hungry and oppressed populace will do, to the Aziraphale of Edinburgh 1827?

I do think S2 and S3 have more connective tissue to each other than to S1, so again, a S1-only canon makes a ton of sense. But I think, if it helps, that you can also apply an AU lens to each season.

Good Omentober drawing challenge Day 9

Stargazer

Another deviation because I can't help but draw my fav.

And out of all the character flaws that were kinda present but not resolved in any way in GO1 and highlighted in GO2 is this aspect of Crowley’s character. And the through-line in GO2 about the unequal amount of sacrifice in the relationship is, like, you could definitely argue this is most importantly a problem of Aziraphale taking Crowley for granted and not Giving him enough and Taking too much but... the whole thing also highlighted Crowley’s emotional neediness making so dependent and so bad at asking for what he wants Given to him and bad at insisting upon his boundaries.

So at first I hoped that maybe the Ineffable Divorce would be good for Crowley in the long run, Aziraphale has finally crossed a boundary that Crowley isn’t going to acquiesce to or compromise on (his identity as Crowley, not the Angel he was). Crowley is staying on Earth around the same place as Muriel and all of the Human secondary characters established during GO2… maybe he’s gonna actually develop some emotional connections with Other People, learn how to still love Aziraphale while not making him the entirety of his world and reason for living. Obviously, that’s not what happened, Crowley’s codependence and obsessive dedication and tendency to spiral into self-destructive self-loathing has only gotten worse…

But at first that still made me hopeful (first mistake when it comes to GO3, I know) that this will be the set-up to his character arc. That the point is to show this flaw of Crowley at its most harmful extreme before he starts climbing out of it…. Right?

And, like, when I first went through the Finale, I was pretty ready to just chuck this down in the very long list of ‘Ineffable Husbands Personal and Interpersonal Issues That Were Not Meaningfully Addressed by the Finale and Only Resolved by FUCKING Reincarnation of All Things", or I suppose you could say that STPUID ASS ‘you were the Best Angel’ speech was supposed to totally resolve all of Crowley’s self-loathing problems and thus also his dependency problems??? Because THAT was the point of GO2, right??? That interpersonal issues can totally be fixed forever with one big dramatic gesture?

But the more and more I think about it, I start considering the possibility that the narrative never gave Crowley a chance to fix his toxically selfless codependent ‘I will basically try to destroy myself over and over again if I can’t be with my Angel’ issues because… it doesn’t actually see them as issues. It just sees them totally unironically uncomplicated expressions of love. Him behaving like that isn't a tragic flaw to heal from, really, it's just a demonstration of how much he loves. The narrative sees the problem with Aziraphale being a 'Taker', not showing Crowley his love enough, but not in the fact that it's also bad for Crowley that, regardless of his partner's behavior, he is so emotionally dependent on Aziraphale, selfless to the point of it being unhealthy.

This is a very serious topic, so I want to make sure I'm being clear as possible. This isn't, like, blaming Crowley for every time he tried to set a boundary but Aziraphale argued and pouted until he surrendered. I'm not saying "Oh this is equally Crowley's fault as a person, for not being good enough at insisting on himself", I am saying that from a character and narrative standpoint, not being able to say 'no' to the one you love is a flaw that a character should raise above and overcome, and it should not be romanticized as a showcase for just how In Love this character is…

In Season One, this was an issue that was easy to overlook. Crowley just seemed to enjoy spoiling Aziraphale rotten, so it was just easy to just see these gestures as romantic and sweet, and even the biggest red flag, so to speak, him resigning himself (and the world) to death because he thought Aziraphale has died…

I mean, it's not healthy, but he was literally just reeling from the shock and grief and guilt of thinking Aziraphale has died probably less than an hour ago… It's a contrast to Book!Crowley's near-constant resolve and optimism, but it still felt like an understandable reaction given the timeframe.

Meanwhile, like, yeah, GO3 Crowley spending years wallowing in an alleyway, dedicating himself to protecting the Bookshop he thinks Aziraphale will not return too, sacrificing the Bentley he considers to be basically part of himself, spiraling into alcoholism and gambling in a desire for self-destruction, always subtextually musing about how much he needs Aziraphale in his life...

It's not like it's not romantic or not heartwarming to see how much he misses Aziraphale and how sad he is without him and how dedicated he still is to him, but… I think it's also tragic because this is not a healthy level of dedication, this is not a healthy level of self-sacrifice… But I'm afraid that GO3 only sees it as a problem as Aziraphale being at fault here. And like, for whatever blame Aziraphale holds for the problems in their relationship, he did not make or ask Crowley spend his last years on Earth sad and miserable in an alleyway, Crowley's own depression and codependence are the main cause here!

The main reason I started getting worried that this story doesn't see that Crowley's behavior isn't just romantic, but also emblematic of a real hurt that he needs to heal from is because… well… not only does he never get a chance to really show that he's ever healed past it (like I said, plenty of character flaws didn't get this kind of resolution in the Finale), his ultimate character resolution is STILL an overdramatic gesture of selfless self-sacrifice in the name of love! He just switched from sacrificing in the name of his love for Aziraphale to sacrificing in the name of his love for Humanity!

A sacrifice that was 'self-destructive' in the most literal meaning of the word, but we're supposed to see as beautiful and the culmination of Crowley's character. Because he's just so caring and selfless… and that care and selflessness has never actually being unhealthy or problematic for him, right?

And then also the only real 'culmination' to Aziraphale's arc is that he starts appreciating Crowley and giving him and sacrifice in the relationship… as demonstrated by the fact that he gave Crowley 100% full control about what kind of world they want to ask God to make next, and went along with what Crowley wanted even when it meant to wipe both of them out of existence… was the problem ever was that Aziraphale was being a 'Taker' or 'Selfish', or was it really just "yeah, he should've been Dramatically Sacrificing Everything to the Point of Self-Destruction just like Crowley always did???"

For one, Book Omens doesn't have a sequel. And it almost certainly was never really going to have one. I mean, it was published in 1990. Terry Pratchett died in 2015. That's 25 years in which they could have written a sequel but chose not to.

In fact, in an interview thing that's conveniently included with my copy of the book, they answer the question "Why is there no sequel?" like this:

Does this sound to you like they have an actual, fleshed out plan for a sequel? It sounds more like they were just throwing ideas around, not even in a drafting phase yet, for a story they didn't really expect to fully write. They also last did this at least 11 years ago, likely much longer.

At best, whatever parts of their ideas made it into the show are the result of one of the two people involved using pieces of something unfinished, likely barely even started, from years ago, without the input of the other author. It certainly can not be a fully accurate representation, simply because one of the people involved is no longer able to add his own insight.

But also, just looking at the book itself, it doesn't really strike me as being written with a sequel in mind. It literally ends with a vision of the future, which is fairly conclusive and also not particularly compatible with the show ending:

This ending does not exactly scream "needs continuation" or "there is further trouble ahead". More the opposite, really.

The scene right before this ending also serves as a very neat bookend and conclusion to the whole story, with Adam stealing an apple and deciding that life would be less fun if people didn't. That eating the apple was worth the trouble you got into for doing so.

The closest we get to foreshadowing a sequel is Crowley mentioning the possibility of the "Big One". But it's not exactly treated as something that is bound to happen. So while I guess it's possible it was actively meant to imply a sequel, the rest of the ending makes it somewhat unlikely imo. More likely it's either incidental or a more vague consideration without an actual, already existing plan attached.

Secondly, it would require a somewhat strange genre and tone shift. Good Omens is a comedy that parodies various things (The Omen, Revelations, The Cold War) to make it's point in a fairly light hearted way. It's universe is somewhat silly but also hopeful.

For it to end the way the show did, it would realistically have to change it's genre. It would have to be a Drama or even Tragedy with a story that seems to have somewhat lost it's parody elements as well as it's hope for the future. Which would be a very strange thing for the sequel to a fairly light hearted and hopeful comedy to do.

It would also be very odd in terms of how Terry Pratchett books usually end. Like, even the more bleak Discworld novels, like Night Watch, do end with the world in tact and at least marginally better than before. There is always hope for the world there. An ending in which the world can not be saved and every single character experiences identity death would be very much out of the norm. (I can't say if it would be for Gaiman, the only other book of his I ever read was Coraline).

Finally, related to this, it is not thematically consistent. Some of the major themes and points of Good Omens are, I would argue:

Both the best and worst of humanity is purely humanity's doing. They have a capacity for great good and evil and either way deserve to exist as they are. Free will and the knowledge of good and evil were worth the cost.

Just because it is written, does not mean it must be done. You can not and should not live your life doing only what someone else has decided you ought to be or do. Your choices, human choices, matter and they make a real difference.

The future may seem bleak, there may be a lot of things wrong, but it is not hopeless and it is worth fighting for. This world and its people are worth fighting for. The only real way to improve it is to get it into people's heads that their actions have consequences and that they should be kinder to each other and the environment.

The show ending is thematically opposed to this. Humanity's will and choices are not the deciding factor, do not make the ultimate difference. The humans of the old universe do not deserve to exist as they are. That imperfect world is not worth saving, can not and should not be saved.

As far as the show seems concerned, Adam, at his worst, was right. The world wasn't salvageable, it's best if we just destroy it and start all over again.

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

that he blushed when he described crowley as a wily adversary (keeps me on my toes)

that he smiled when he realized the bentley was back without a scratch after having blown up

that he refused crowley a suicide pill

that he kept an eye on crowley for 26 years after 1941, then sought him out and gave him the holy water so that he didn't have to get it himself. but i can't have you risking your life. not even for something dangerous. if we must quote it then at least let's quote it right.

that he went to hell for crowley and made sure they wouldn't bother him anymore

that he only ever cared about crowley not being destroyed

that no way aziraphale didn't check on crowley in three years

I saw one particular post today and was going to type my reply (respectfully) directly to them however they tagged it with “if you don’t like my post then don’t engage”. So unlike that author, I will be respectful and just post this into the Tumblr ether.

These are common themes I’ve seen over the past two weeks:

“People who don’t like the finale are just selfish because they didn’t get the ending they wanted” - I would argue that Prime/writers etc have been leading our expectations in a certain direction for years just to pull the rug from under us at the last second. I don’t blame people for reacting this way and I don’t think it’s selfish for wanting a happy ending for our characters. It’s not an unreasonable expectation for a tv show finale.

“If you don’t like it, you just don’t understand media literacy/you’re stupid” - This is a comedy fantasy show about angels and demons attempting to thwart apocalypses. You don’t need a Phd in English Lit/philosophy/psychology/whatever to understand or enjoy this show. Disliking the finale is not an indicator of intelligence level or understanding. It’s a personal opinion, based off of many factors. The same goes with liking the finale.

“This is TP’s ending so you must accept/like/respect it” - respect yes, compulsory enjoyment - no. There should never be any hate/disrespect directed to anyone involved in the show. Ever. But insinuating that media should never be disliked or criticised because a certain person wrote it is just not realistic. No one is above critique. We are all humans with thoughts, feelings and opinions, these are involuntary responses. We are reacting to what we are seeing and it’s ok to discuss these (respectfully of course). God themselves could float down from the clouds and write me a poem and I’m well within my rights to like it or not 🤷‍♀️.

“These people are just selfish, be grateful we got anything at all” - ahh yes, gratitude. Well, this is one I am struggling with. Whilst I really do appreciate what must have been a lot of negotiations and turmoil behind the scenes and a massive amount of effort from everyone involved to get the finale to us at all…. I kinda wish we didn’t get one. There was some fun moments, but the ending completely and utterly broke my heart. I would rather wonder what might have happened than knowing for sure THAT is what happened to them and everyone else in that world. So, I’m sorry, but I cannot be grateful for (in my opinion) a poorly written, plot-hole ridden finale with such a bleak, depressing ending. I just can’t.

Anyway, this is just my 2 pence on the rhetoric I keep seeing. I am so happy for you if you loved the finale. I really wish I did too.

The point of this post is just to ask can we please just have a bit more respect for each other? I really do not understand or agree with people who loved the finale at all but I will not call you selfish/stupid/ungrateful for doing so.