running out of time

I have no ideas whatsoever so I’m watching vines all day and see if they’re relatable to Good Omens.

Can we talk about the fact that God put the fate of the universe in the hands of two of the most emotionally compromised people on the planet?

Crowley is broken and depressed and Aziraphale has just been brutally roasted to death by God.

Yeah. They are not of sound mind.

These are also the beings who spent thousands of years doing everything possible to avoid doing their jobs because they’d rather get lunch. Aziraphale literally popped over to France during the Revolution because he wanted crêpes, for fuck’s sake.

And then they lost the Antichrist and spent eleven years raising the wrong child.

Trust them to make a decision beyond wine pairing? No thanks.

This isn’t really a bash on them. Quite the opposite.

They were never meant to be heroes. They were two immortals who loved books, music, tea, vintage cars, and getting mildly drunk while arguing about a bird in a spaceship sharpening its beak on a cosmic mountain at the edge of creation. They liked ducks. They liked Jane Austen. They liked Earth.

That’s what made them special.

It’s about Aziraphale hosting an entire ball for Crowley. Come on. That was never for Maggie and Nina, whether he wants to admit it or not.

And let’s not forget that the world was already saved once, not by angels, demons, or divine plans, but by a child.

Adam didn’t save the world because he was powerful. He saved it because he loved it. He loved his friends, his dog, his hometown, and the life he had built for himself. In the end, that mattered more than Heaven’s plans or Hell’s ambitions.

For me, the biggest mistake was pushing Aziraphale and Crowley into the role of heroic martyrs and cosmic sacrificial lambs. That archetype works beautifully in plenty of stories, but Good Omens was never really about noble self-sacrifice.

It was about ordinary love and ordinary choices winning over grand designs. About choosing the world because it’s worth living in.

It’s about two celestial idiots who kept trying to save the world almost by accident because they loved being part of it.

Maybe that’s why I keep thinking about this quote:

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” Gandalf

That has always felt closer to the heart of Good Omens than any grand sacrifice.

The world was saved by Adam because he loved it.

And Crowley and Aziraphale spent six thousand years proving exactly why it was worth loving.

Art trade with Cassieoh

After four weeks of post-finale discourse and fandom turmoil, this was such a funny ask to receive (I mean that 100% positively). Thank you, Anon. In these trying times, we should focus on the important things. Remember our heritage. At the top of the list is that Aziraphale consumed an entire ox and Crowley watched him do it with eyes that were so, so, so big.

In answer to your question: Yes, it's a sex thing. Yes, The Ox Ribs Event rocked both their shit so profoundly it set their brains on fire. And that's why they are Like That.

Basically:

weird ass emails from my good friends American rock band My Chemical Romance

i’m not going to claim to be any sort of media studies expert bc i’m not, but i think it’s fair to say that while tv or movies or books etc are open to all interpretations, those conclusions still have to have a basis on what is actually on the screen or page. and so much of what i see from people who tout the beauty of go3 just does not line up with what i saw on screen (or in the book, if we want to look there too). it’s like someone having an opinion based on false information. if someone said they love the first jurassic park movie bc in the end the humans and the dinosaurs sort out their differences and stop hurting each other so everyone gets a happy ending, you would say “ok but that literally did not happen”.

i don’t know how to change that for myself. i’m trying to just view it as a difference in opinion, but instead i find myself continuously thinking “that’s nice, but that literally didn’t happen”. at the same time, i know i’m not going to change anyone’s mind even if i wanted to try. so like. what do i do, just ignore everyone who talks about how perfect the ending was and how much they love it? even people that i otherwise enjoy interacting with? that doesn’t feel fair either. it all makes me feel like i’m coming off as an elitist asshole who only values my own ‘correct’ opinions - which is the last thing i want!

I don't think being an English major makes me an expert on media analysis, by any means, but I"ll be doing a whole lot of it between now and graduation, and I've done a lot for it already. I don't want to tell you how to feel about the finale, because I do my best not to be an asshole, but here's my take:

First, I see the ending feels more bittersweet than pure sunshine and rainbows, but it didn't feel entirely doom-and-gloom either. The versions of Aziraphale and Crowley that we knew and loved had to give up what they wanted to fix a problem that was a lot bigger than the two of them, but somehow, in a universe governed by probability instead of destiny, a version of those characters were conceived, born, found each other again, and actively chose each other. And this time, it was possible for their happiness to last, and it did.

Though, I've also been a hobby writer for a long time, and love digging into how storytelling works, so it's worth mentioning that a "happy ending" isn't always the ending that makes the reader happy. It might, but the writers aren't mind readers, y'know? They can't really know how we'll respond until the story is out in the world. So a happy ending is either a) "All the characters' problems are solved forever and their crops are forever watered and the evil witch is miserable in her jail cell she can't magic herself out of" (which is the idealized fairytale version most people know), or b) Maybe the characters can't have what they really wanted, but they somehow find happiness wherever they end up.

You may notice that neither example of a happy ending is about the reader/viewer's reaction to it. Not that endings are never written for the readers, in fact, the romance genre is escapist by design, so the endings have to be happy for the reader and the characters they're meant to project onto. But even though Good Omens is a love story, any romance publisher/movie studio/etc. would want a lot of it to change before they'd sell it, because Aziraphale and Crowley have too much personality and backstory to work in escapism.

Some parts of the finale were really hard to watch, but the happy ending isn't the subjective bit. The subjective bit is whether the happy ending actually worked for the story, or whether it fell flat, or maybe a bit of both or neither and why it didn't work for you. Although, usually you also need to make an argument for what you think the writers were going for and why. Sometimes you could go the extra mile and figure out the actual context the thing was written in, but especially for stories set in the present (like Good Omens), a vague understanding of current events is enough. I need to refresh my memory when it comes to "Death of the Author", but I think that's just for cases where there's something worth talking about whether the writers meant for it to be there or not. I don't think we'd need it in this case.

Part of the joy of fandom is that we don't need to hold ourselves to the same standards as academics, but I hope some of this was useful anyway. I'm sorry the finale wasn't as satisfying for you as it was for me, though, and I understand why people wanted the fairytale ending for them. Before I saw it, I did too.

i think it can be argued whether or not the ending was bittersweet or a complete tragedy, but i would say that whichever degree of bitter you see it as, it wasn't appropriate for this story. the first type of happy ending you described - the fairytale ending - is actually pretty accurate to the ending of GO1/the book! sure, there's crowley's warning of "the big one", but overall the characters and the audience are all left with a feeling of accomplishment in averting armageddon and getting one over heaven/hell, joy at the shenanigans that got us here, and hope for a better future that they all fought for. i don't believe the ending of GO3 is in line with that message. that ending felt very hopeless, that crowley and aziraphale's "sacrifice" was really them backed into a corner with little other options, and that god still won (she's the one with the power to actually DO whatever they would end up deciding on).

i just think that the conclusion of GO1/book with adam deciding that this world is worth fighting for even though it is flawed and the conclusion of GO3 with the ineffables deciding that everything is fucked and they need to just start over do not line up. i think the trajectory of the plot in go3 (maybe even from go2) brought the story to this impossible hurdle of "defeating god" and so such a drastic tonal shift was forced. that's why i see a lot of "this is the only way it could've ended" and i understand what people mean. i would argue that the story never had to be written with the stakes so high.

That's a good point about how sudden the shift in tone was. Most stories, unless they get really experimental about structure, would drop hints about something that big a lot sooner. At least, they do in the west. I think it's pretty common in parts of Asia to have a big twist show up pretty late that wasn't telegraphed at all, and then the point of the story is to see how the characters deal with the fallout.

But I digress. The original writers were both British, and S1 was written using a fancier version of Freytag's Pyramid, like most Western stories are.. Following that structure, the first 3 episodes of S2 would've gotten progressively bleaker, or they would've hinted that a more sudden twist was coming... which would've shown up in episode 3 or 4. Instead we got an even sillier version of S1 where everything seemed less apocalyptic until the last second.

I rewatched S1 and S2 before the finale dropped, and having seen them all more than once, I think of S2 as the odd one out. There's still a lot to like about it, don't get me wrong, but all of the S1 weirdness was explained as Adam's interests mixing with new fears about the state of the world (brought to you by our resident conspiracy theorist Anathema), and all that was seeping out of his mind and warping reality. So the aliens were set up, but the zombies in S2? Since when were those a thing?

Now you've intrigued me. My blorbo brain is in the background, and my hobby writer/storytelling nerd brain is dissecting everything. Part of the trouble with S2 for me is that it felt too slice-of-life to build suspense or anticipation or what have you. So now I can't decide if the finale was the problem, or the whole second season that was supposed to set it up.

Thank you for giving my analysis and editor brain something to chew on :3

i've seen a lot of people more familiar with the 2 original authors' independent works explain how the writing of go2-3 does or doesn't reflect their individual writing styles. since none of us can really be 100% sure at this time about how the ending of the unwritten book sequel was supposed to go, we can only speculate based on what we do know. many people have done so to say that the ending in go3 is not reflective of something terry pratchett would write, or at least, if the ending was the same, it would've had a softer landing. on the other hand, many have said that the trajectory of the show and its ultimate bittersweet ending is very indicative of the Other author's writing (which makes sense, given that he was the one who wrote seasons 2 & 3). so i think that a lot of problems we see in the change of tone and lack of proper setup and everything else stems from this one author continuing the story solo (considering TP wrote most of the original novel anyway) when he has fundamentally different values when it comes to storytelling.

part of me thinks: even with a full 6 episode season, this ending would still not have been satisfying. another part of me thinks: even if this is word for word what TP wrote, i still wouldn't have liked it.

also, part of the hurt and betrayal i think many of us feel is because we were promised a happy ending of aziraphale and crowley retired together in a south downs cottage. i think it's fair to say that we were, at the very least, gravely misled (since i do not see asa and anthony as aziraphale and crowley, it's more like: this literally didn't happen).