NVM

Castiel has yet to find someone worthy of even an iota of his attention, so when he and Dean Winchester cross paths, the lothario is thrown into consternation.

This Castiel proves to be a challenge. One Dean can’t seem to step away from. And Dean has never failed to make someone fall in love with him.

He sure as hell ain’t gonna start now.

•

POV: You’re trying to flirt with Dr. Spencer Reid but he’s sassy and it gets into your nerve.

Okay, hear me out. In 2x02, when they’re talking about “how people fall in love”, Crowley talks about sudden rainstorms,

which is an obvious reference to how he fell in love, about 6000 years earlier (poor demon thinks everyone falls in love the way he did)

Aziraphale doesn’t get it and answers “seems a bit unlikely”. He didn’t connect the dots, he doesn’t think Crowley loves him that way. All he knows about falling in love is what he read in books. Of course he fell in love with Crowley too, but I’m pretty sure he did in ‘41 when Crowley saved his books from a bomb, and that’s a bit hard to recreate, so… balls.

That’s his idea, you make two people dance together and they magically fall in love, which is so in-character I want to scream. Now let’s get to 2x05. We know Aziraphale always tried to avoid organizing those meetings, but he’s suddenly so excited about it he is WILLING TO GIVE AWAY HIS BOOKS. Why would he do something like that? There’s no way it’s actually to make Maggie and Nina fall in love. At that point, Muriel doesn’t even care anymore about it, they all know the truth about the miracle is about to be revealed, so there’s no point in being so persistent about Maggie and Nina’s relationship. He’s an angel; of course he cares about humans being happy, but I don’t think he cares so much about two semi-strangers’ love life that he’s willing to give away BOOKS for the off chance that the Jane Austen method will actually work on two humans he knows nothing about. So, my conclusion is, he’s organizing that night for him and Crowley. They are the ones that he hopes realize they’re deeply in love with each other, and that is something worth giving away books for. Which explains why he’s so excited but also a bit scared when he asks Crowley to dance with him.

It explains why he ignores the fact that Crowley is trying to tell him that something important and dangerous is about to happen, just so they can have a little dance. It also explains this reaction when he sees Gabriel and Beelzebub being in love with each other

and the way he looks at Crowley while they’re talking about them.

I mean, I know he always stares lovingly at him, but not like that, right? That’s a face that screams “I’m so going to tell you I love you when all this is over”.

So, my point is:

Fuck Metatron.

That’s my point.

So, I started thinking, what would their equivalent sentiment be? Because neither of them particularly like their respective head offices, after all. It simply wouldn’t have the same effect for them to say those things. In fact, it might have the opposite meaning for them.

And then I remembered “to the world” and it hit me. They love the world. That’s the whole point. They’re against Armageddon because they love the world. They love humanity and they love music and they love dining at the Ritz and fine wine. And most of all the love sharing those things with each other.

From a plot standpoint, that kiss showed Crowley's desperate attempts to keep Aziraphale, to reel him in and back to the Us that they had built upon.

But from just a show standpoint, they. fucking. kissed.

Obviously their love transcends physicality, and Neil has said that Good Omens is a love story even before season 2, but the outright confirmation of a widely popular queer ship ON SCREEN is just so... Unheard of.

Every fandom or show has their trademark gay couple that aren't-really-gay-but-also-kind-of-are-gay: Merlin and Arthur, Sherlock and John (very heavy offender), Dean and Castiel (okay this one was canon, but we all know what happened IMMEDIATELY afterwards), and I suppose at some point Ineffable Husbands had just been included in the same category as the rest of them.

And to have it be moved from mostly fandom and fan work fuelled to outright canon - like 'they fucking kissed on screen' canon - is just so fucking fantastic.

It's not vague, it's not lines that are blurred for the sake of being on the fence of appealing to two audiences at once, and it's not only canon because the creator just said it's canon without rhyme or reason purely for the sake of appealing to a queer audience (looking at you, Ms J. K. Rowling) - it's undeniable, blatant evidence that Crowley and Aziraphale are in love.

And yes, at the moment it's devastating, but it's also devastatingly real. And that's so important.

Especially with the release of Our Flag Means Death, I really do hope we are entering a new era in mainstream media where queer ships finally aren't treated as some sort of mysterious prize that the writers dangle in front of you like a carrot on a stick, and are just simply treated like any other ship out there.

Because if so, then queer kids will be growing up to these shows, see this new era of unabashedly queer media, and won't have to hide away their ships like some dirty little secret. They won't have to wonder if their representation is even representation. They won't have to get excited over being able to see the small chance of themselves represented in a character only to be let down so incredibly badly, because queerness is good only when it's marketable.

THAT BEING SAID. I absolutely felt the same as OP did when I watched the episode because HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS. You know what I love about this kiss? (aside from the delicious emotional devastation which I have not yet recovered from of course)

Now nobody can deny the nature of their relationship.

Whenever I talked about Good Omens to people outside of the fandom, it felt like I had to defend the idea of Aziraphale & Crowley being in love or just avoid mentioning it at all, because outside of the fandom everyone seemed to view it as a buddy comedy, and you just sound like an overzealous fan by suggesting otherwise. We've had too many shows where the subtext is there but the creators treat it like a joke, or deny that it means what it appears to mean. Or you try to explain it to casual viewers and they just think you're overanalyzing.

I love this kiss because it makes the nature of their relationship undeniable to the whole audience. You no longer see it only when engaging with fandom analysis or tallying up the subtextual evidence. You can no longer overlook it, or call it a "buddy comedy" or a "bromance". Even a casual viewer now has to look at Aziraphale and Crowley and say, oh, so this is romantic. This has been a love story the whole time. If they didn't see it before, now they have to recontextualize the whole series for themselves with this new information.

Not only that, but I love this kiss because it further proves to me that I can trust Neil Gaiman. In short, there are very few showrunners out there who I trust to take care of their characters. Neil was already on that list, to be fair, and while the end of Season 2 may have been devastating*, it feels so respectful of the characters and the journeys they need to go on. It's obviously not the end of their story and I think we're all pretty confident that Ineffable Husbands are meant to be endgame (cottage in the South Downs, anyone?), but this was a huge step in their tumultuous relationship that was handled with such emotional honesty, like, holy shit. I respect the hell out of Neil, David, and Michael for delivering such an incredibly raw scene. Not only that, but seeing an on screen kiss reaffirmed to me that Neil is cognizant of his audience and is not afraid to make narrative choices that other shows have avoided for fear of losing viewers. These are all things I knew already (all hail Gaiman tbh), but when Crowley kissed Aziraphale, it really drove it home to me.

I did not need an Ineffable Husbands kiss to prove that they're in love, but I won't pretend it bothers me to have them kiss, because it doesn't. Quite the opposite, in fact. And this wasn't the soft and romantic kiss you would hope for, it was desperate and awkward because that's exactly what it was supposed to be. I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was deliciously heartbreaking and set us up beautifully for a final chapter. (And Amazon had better give us a third season or I will riot.)

So yes. I love the kiss, I think it's hugely important, and I am SO excited to rewatch the season again soon. In the meantime, you'll probably catch me flailing about it here on Tumblr for a while 😉

how to ask the demon you've been smitten over for 6000 years to dance: an angel's guide

bonus:

Crowley's expressions of love in season 2

Bonus: