SurroundedByBooks

Shane: In some sort of Austen-esque existence where hjs ill-advised flirtation with a notorious rake goes too far. Scandalised by the intimate use of first names he flees, concerned what society and his goodly parents will think, his reputation at stake. He tries to find a proper marriage prospect but alas his heart is lost to the rake! But he finally follows his heart and invites Ilya into his home too (and accepts first name usage!)

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.

I'm so glad the books have worked for you! Thanks for letting me know. 🙂

You may laugh a little to hear that there was one afternoon not too long ago while, in the middle of doing some research, I started wondering whether I'd hallucinated the source of the title of SYWTBAW myself.

I'd had an ask from somebody here about the origin of the concept of the Wizard's Manual. A brief discussion of the history of the title was going to flow from that, and I needed to find the name of the publisher of that original series of 1950s and 1960s career books from which the format had come: "So You Want To Be A {Scientist / Teacher / Nurse / Physicist / (whatever)]").

And I went Googling for that info, and ... could I find it? Could I find anything about those books (which surely, it seemed to me, ought to be at least somewhere in the first few pages' worth of search results)?

Nope.

As I kept searching, and finding nothing, I started becoming increasingly horrified. My memory told me that those books had been all over several small-town libraries when I was a child. Was it possible... that my memories were wrong? Had I imagined or invented those books? Had I made up that title out of whole cloth?

For about five minutes I sat there in a cold sweat, typing in search after search and (frankly) freaking out.

...Finally, though, way WAY down the search results, I found what I needed. The books' publisher turned out to be Harper (or later, Harper & Row): and the author of many of them, to my great delight, turned out to be Alan E. Nourse... who was not just a nonfiction writer, but also wrote SF, and who'd written a book called Star Surgeon that I'd dearly loved as a young reader. (A full collection of Nourse's books and other writings is preserved at Boston University.)

So THAT all turned out to be OK. But jeeeeeez... talk about a bad few moments. 😅

The Rodeo Rule: you only have to do it for the first time once.

The Rohan Rule: if you are at a social function full of new people and you want to be liked, find someone doing important work like setup or food prep and offer to help.

The Tutorial Mode Rule: to navigate an unfamiliar situation where you fear you will mess up an interaction, preface the interaction by mentioning that you've never done this before, and let them know if you have a specific concern or question.

The Rocket Science Rule: most new things you want to try seem very complicated but are simple when taken step by step.

The [X] Will Remember That Rule: if you need to make small talk with the same person on a regular basis, try to save one fact or current event in their life from a given conversation and bring it up next time you talk.