too funky

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends. And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot... no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human... Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield. ...for ever.

I submit humbly that that ending is not the voice of a writer (the interview in the illustrated tie-in edition specifies that "the kids mostly originated with Terry") who would ultimately be down with annihilation as the Only Solution To The Problems Of The World.

Bonus reminder: I'm betting this passage is Terry's ("vanload of hippies on a blotterful of Owsley's Old Original" has that ring to it). I ask you, does it describe a character who would only a few years later in story time -- after sixty centuries of ups and downs -- (1) wallow indefinitely in a drunken sulk, and then (2) tell God to finish erasing the world, including himself and his best friend, and start over?

Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times -- he thought briefly of the fourteenth century -- then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him. Okay, so Hell was down on him. So the world was ending. So the Cold War was over and the Great War was starting for real. So the odds against him were higher than a vanload of hippies on a blotterful of Owsley's Old Original. There was still a chance.

@gifevents: From Script to Screen Day 4 - Character descriptions

"There's got to be another way."

He was a bad angel because he refused to toe the party line, and so he fell. Sometimes you do what you think is the right thing and it still blows up in your face.

The point was that Crowley learned to live with that pain and he became a new person without heaven and he is, not always happy, but surviving and sometimes really enjoying being that person.

A tragedy or a loss changes you and that's okay. There's no wiping it away. There's just getting up off the floor, and taking an offered hand if there is one, and building yourself back up from there.

Like yeah. It's cute. "Look at you, you're gorgeous" is funny. Angel!Crowley being a silly cutie compared to Aziraphale's innocent sweetness is very nice.

But at the same time, I think it's so much more poignant that Aziraphale shielded a complete stranger on the Wall of Eden. He didn't do it because he knew who the angel Crowley was, but because... Aziraphale is fundamentally a good, trusting person. He didn't smite Crowley since he doesn't *want* to smite anyone -- he doesn't actually hate demons even though he should. And Crowley, simultaneously, reassured Aziraphale not because he was remembering the sweet worrier of an angel he met before the Beginning, but because *Crowley* is also a good person.

I like the idea that these two strangers who have no reason to trust each other, who have nothing in common on the face of it, just decide to trust each other anyway, because they can, because they see a kindred goodness and love for humanity in each other right from the start. And I somehow feel like this notion that Aziraphale loved Crowley before he was a demon, or that Crowley knew how notorious Aziraphale was as a hunter during the war, really cheapens that.

cottage morning kisses