OC Character Development & Fandom Smeg

I will preface this by saying I like the finale overall for what it was, I gave it four stars on Letterboxd, but this review goes into some elements that I agree with, and I didn’t get on with (like the Mrs Sandwich actively hating Aziraphale when all she really knows is that he’s the first person to leave Wickber street in the string of most people getting bought out or leaving and Crowley would never talk bad about him to anyone regardless of how hurt he was so why does she have such venom for Aziraphale specifically?! & that the whole middle with the Jesus plot where I feel if we had the six episodes it would’ve felt less …horribly rushed and goes nowhere?) then there’s specifically about the third act:

I love the ending in theory, it’s a very sweet ending and I did say in my Letterboxd review that I had a problem with Aziraphale & Crowley being human but that’s not exactly it I’m coming to realise... but I’m not fine with how we got there.

Crowley:

a) accepts the end that he previously refused to God directly, minutes after he argues with her about it. Just—‘Yeah best choice of action is to still kill everyone and destroy ourselves to create a world where humans will be equal with no gods, demons or angels and has free will despite the fact that we’ve shown time and time again in the past two series that humans do have free will and it’s a key message of the show’

b) apparently in a show that champions the fact that Crowley and Aziraphale make each other better, NOOO apparently Crowley is too broken in a world where nothing has been fair for him so that the only course of action is for him to kill himself, the entire world & Aziraphale and Aziraphale just accepts that?! Without fighting him on it, despite clearly disagreeing and wanting to just do what Crowley has wanted for years (‘to just be us’). They don’t even entertain the possibility of doing what Adam does in series 1, though that is a real and thematic and bookend ish option they could take and just reboot the universe to as it was where they could have made the stipulation that they could be left alone together. But nope apparently the only way to deal with Crowley and his trauma is apparently mutual sucide and sort of genocide. What kind of message does that send?! A very anti core of what the entirety of Good Omens (book & tv show) is one that’s for sure.

Also Satan’s there for….no reason?

Just going to touch on the human bit because it’s a sweet sequence and I like Asa and Anthony for what they were but they are not Aziraphale & Crowley.

I’d rather have the two characters I’ve grown to love over the past seven years together as humans than two strangers. Do I love that Aziraphale & Crowley find each other in every universe? YES! Do I love that the humans we ended up on in the show universe are not (presumably) Aziraphale & Crowley but are just body copies with some similarities? No, no I do not. I would much rather have taken the human thing if they were confirmed to be the characters we loved and that our Aziraphale & Crowley got the Southdown cottage like they deserved. Like I said, I like Asa & Anthony but I think Crowley and Aziraphale deserved more.

Though we’ll never know of course, I find it hard to imagine this is what Terry Pratchett would have wanted on the whole. We know he wanted the Southdowns Cottage, but…I struggle to think that the build up to it is not what he would have imagined.

It just feels like the third act was written as a a massive fuck you to Gaiman and ends up dragging us along for the ride as a result.

So, I know there’s a whole thing of people responding to ‘well aren’t you worried your favourite celebrity will be in the Epstein Files?’ On social media and more often than not they’ll be like ‘no because my favourite celebrity is *insert innocent cartoon character here*’ well, I’d been feeling much the same about my favourite celebrities, in the sense I didn’t think any of the people I admire or used to admire would be in it, and certainly not my favourite childhood author, except….my favourite author when I was a child was JK Rowling. I never really thought about it but okay so being a TERF is really really shitty but it doesn’t mean she’s in the Epstein Files in some way? She wouldn’t have gone that far, right? WRONG.

Yeah so turns out my favourite childhood author who is the author who got me writing stories and believing in the fact that I could one day write a book and publish it, is mentioned in the files, her team contacted Epstein to invite him to the Broadway premiere of The Cursed Child, and to a Harry Potter dinner. THEY REACHED OUT. I mean who thinks inviting a paedo is okay to any function? Rowling might have okayed it, given that it was her personal team and I don’t know if it was known he was a paedophile sex offender by that point (I’m not inclined to google Epstein to be fair) but that’s not the point. The point is Rowling’s team invited him.

Let’s say that she didn’t know or didn’t invite have anything to do with it personally, BUT then there’s apparently the fact that she invited Andrew Mountbatten to the set of HBO’s Harry Potter AFTER everything (I don’t know the sources on that one) ALSO she called Lolita (yep that book) a ‘great love story’ (it’s not a love story). then there’s also this which kind of hints that they might have known each other in some manner:

Now as an autistic person, Harry Potter has been one of my special interests for the majority of my life and I am very confused on how to proceed from here? I’m heartbroken honestly, I feel like I did when I discovered Rowling was a TERF. I feel like the past 20 years have been wasted.

and more importantly I feel I’ve lost my motivation to even write because I feel so disgusted by the fact I idolised her so much when I was a child. I mean the first fanfic I wrote that could be recognisably be classed as fanfic was Harry Potter fanfic, aged 7. I remember talking to my mum excitedly how I wanted to be like Rowling when I grew up, how I wanted to write to her and ask her advice on writing and tell her how much I love the books, how Harry Potter had been the model story in my head in how to do everything I’ve been taught as a writer. I EVEN USED TO WRITE HARRY POTTER FANFIC TO PRACTICE MY WRITING, and this is happening just as I’m writing my first novel I’m serious about getting published. This news is actually impacting me mentally even if she’s not actually done anything directly terrible.

And now I just feel like….everything’s been a lie. I’m back to square one with what to do with everything, like with the TERF stuff and I’ve spent exactly 20 years obsessed with Harry Potter regardless of everything that I don’t know what to do now because I know I can’t go on supporting this. I literally coincidentally looked at my bookshelf last night, at the Harry Potter shelf I have and shuddered. Like that’s never happened before and now it has.

So, yeah guess I really don’t know what to do now? I’m still holding on that there’s benefit of the doubt a bit and we’ll see what happens with it but at the same time if there’s not then, what do I do?

Last night I saw Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts in Oxford and it was brilliant. I’d recommend going to see it but in case people can’t, here are my highlights, spoilers ahead obviously:

Tom Chambers was amazing as Morse, he had all the familiar mannerisms of Morse and he was just over all great, though it was strange seeing someone step into the role beyond John Thaw and Shaun Evans.

The Morse theme started playing after the murder during a production of Hamlet and Morse locking down the theatre to investigate, and I IMMEDIATELY locked in to the play. We were in the TV universe and I was in detective mode myself and I was ready to take mental notes on how it fit into the timeline and who killed this actress.

The link to the past were events in 1962 involving a production of Hamlet Morse was in (in a small role) during his time at college in Oxford, several of the people involved with that production were involved with the production of Hamlet that ended in apparent murder in 1987, meaning THIS WHOLE PLAY CAN FIT WITH THE TV TIMELINE WITH NO WRINKLES (at a squeeze).

Morse and Lewis were ON POINT. Literally all of my favourite moments came from just watching those two.

My favourite exchange in the whole play was this because it just sums up what I love about Morse and Lewis dynamic:

*Morse handing Lewis a group photo of the Hamlet production from his years at Lonsdale and asking what he makes of it*

Lewis: …..and you, looking like Rick Astley.

*long pause*

Morse: ‘……who?’

….RIP Morse, you would have hated the Rickroll.

Actually I loved all the little nods like this to modern technology and pop culture and also linking it what Morse and Lewis are like around it in the tv show, they had Lewis’ adeptness at computers and excitement at them and Morse’s reluctance to step into ‘modern’ technology.

Actually on that note as well absolutely loved how Morse and Lewis called out the fact that you’d think in 1987 people would be more accepting of homosexuality (they weren’t) when discussing a theatre director’s issue with the actor for Hamlet being gay. Loved that inclusion because that’s Lewis and Morse both confirming they don’t give a crap if someone’s gay (Lewis confirms this in Life Born of Fire but like it’s nice to see more of the opinions of Morse on that topic).

Interval time: it was interesting because I asked my dad (who I went with) who he thought has committed the murder and he said it was probably the historian and I said well she definitely has to have done something like that, Morse is trying to romance her, she’s either going to be killed or be the killer. (Spoiler: We got it half right)

Poor Lewis got cockblocked from his romantic, no kids involved, night in with Val by Morse and work and it was hilarious but also poor Lewis can’t catch a break 😂

Morse telling one of the actors in the unfortunate Hamlet production off for breaking their sobriety with alcohol when she’s completely plastered really hurt because obviously it’s years of alcohol consumption that ultimately triggers Morse’s death.

If I had a nickel for a father accidentally sleeping with his daughter in the Morseverse I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.

Okay there was a whole side plot about Morse wanting to leave the police and pick up his degree (again, if I had a nickel…) that kind of went nowhere but it did make the one line that serves as the emotional gut punch at the end of the play:

‘I’m a policeman Lewis’

‘Well so am I, what’s wrong with being a policeman sir?’

‘Nothing, nothing at all Lewis’

I need all versions of the Morse theme played in that stage show on Spotify now, I NEED to listen to these variants because they were AWESOME.