Abaddon Hope

Fuck that, GO3 is NOT canon

[catkelpie]

This post on Twitter kinda sums up the entirety of what's wrong with Good Omens 3 - they destroyed all the magic. They destroyed that magical, whimsical, optimistic universe and replaced it with bleak reality, a world without magic. Before the finale, we could visit all these places and believe that they were there, read ancient history and believe that they'd been there, blame our computer troubles on Newt, take things as prophecies from Agnes Nutter...and now? We're left with emptiness.

[abaddonhope]

The thing is, you can't *actually* destroy magic. You can't remove it from the world. What you can do, if you're some kind of sadistic asshole with ulterior motives, is try to destroy everyone's BELIEF in magic.

Faith is how magic works. If you can convince people that there's no magic, they stop feeling it. They no longer see it in the world. That doesn't mean it's not there, or can't be there; but it is ultimately up to you to believe in it or not.

Every day I see new levels of what I can only see as actual cruelty and malice in the writing of GO3. It hurts and I hate it for every one of us that are still reeling from it. But if I learned one thing from the real Aziraphale and Crowley, it's that you don't have to accept whatever bullshit the powers that be try to feed you. There is always another path, a way for you and the magic and the world to survive. They showed us that at the end of s1, but were not allowed to in s3. So this time it's our turn to stand up, reject what we've been told, and find another way, for all of us AND them. Because the magic is only gone if you let some asshole with a pen and corporate-level financial backing dictate that for you. Aziraphale and Crowley would never, and neither will I. There is already so much fic, art, even simple hc posts about all the ways they might have gotten around what we were told happened in that badly-written train wreck of an ending. Go find the ones that work for you, get your faith back, take the magic back. What's been done will always hurt but it doesn't have to destroy everything, idgaf what She- or he, or anyone else- says.

[slowlystupendousdelusion]

"They only had 90 mins" this, "they had to abridge the story" that

Just scrap the script and replace with 85 mins of A&C though the ages a la the Hard Times cold open

(The last 5 mins is reserved for Aziraphale's return, wherein he explains he didn't like it much up there but has added 12 extra layers of red tape to the starting-the-second-coming process, culminating in a form that gets sent to an inbox where he's set up a rule where anything with an attachment goes straight to the trash folder. "They'll figure it out eventually but it should give us another millennium or two." Crowley didn't have a hope in hell of holding a grudge; he's immediately besotted once again.)

[child-of-ineffable-divorce]

Oh and also, let me tell you what really fucking pisses me off.

The focus on the angel that Crowley was before the fall.

If my best friend (female) went up to god and said “I’m the second best woman there ever was” and when asked who the first best woman was, came to me (trans man) and said “this one right here” I think I’d nuke something. I’m not a woman anymore, and I haven’t been for the longest time. My best friend knew me before I came out and has never been anything but supportive. Translate that dynamic to Crowley and Aziraphale and it just feels like Aziraphale is ignoring who Crowley IS, and does everything that he does for who Crowley WAS.

His “we can be angels together” moment in season 2 works because he’s deluded, blinded by the promise of an ideal life. It’s supposed to hurt. But in a show finale, to have one half of a duo only praise who the other half USED to be,,? Feels icky to me

I’m not saying it’s a transphobic metaphor or anything, I’m just using personal experience to describe how it makes me feel.

Finale!Aziraphale (who is a completely different character to me; I reject him) doesn’t give a damn about the Crowley he spent the last several millennia caring for and that pisses me off beyond belief

[firelikestars]

nah fuck that. what the fuck.

so 6000 years of queer defiance, quite literally in the face of god, now never existed. erasure has never been more literal. crowley and aziraphale didn’t just die, they never existed. their love story never existed. death you can grieve, you can commemorate what was lost; love transcends death. at the very least, they deserved that.

where was that love story, by the way? where was the romance? legitimately i felt more love between them during the final 15 than in the entirety of that 90 minutes. at least then it felt like they mattered to each other. fuck.

and aziraphale still works for the metatron?? are you fucking kidding me??? that is a wild message to be sending. even in some idealized world where they fall in love with free will, aziraphale still cannot escape the one that kept them apart. queer love still has to be allowed and endorsed and encouraged by the oppressor. fuck you actually.

genuinely i would’ve been so fine with a human ending if it was done well. i would’ve taken anything, i would’ve been so happy with a mediocre finale or even a bad one! fucking whatever! but that shit was offensive.

[abaddonhope]

'Erasure has never been more literal' ‼️

[wildazzy]

Hello ~ ♡

I just did this edit some time ago and decided to share

Happy Pride Month everyone❤️💛🩷!

[hey-must-be-a-devilbetween-us]

Its just...maybe I was naive, maybe I should have known better, but I didn't know how much I needed the finale to be okay.

like, not even great, not even good, but just okay, just safe, sad that it was over but happy that it happened, a closed book with a happy if mediocre ending.

and then it wasn't, and it knocked me entirely off kilter, and the worst part was it completely blindsided me, it wasn't just mediocre, or rushed, or boring, or disappointing.

It was all of those things and also tragic. It made me sad.

and the thing is...before that, I never could have imagined that Good Omens would make me sad, would have me break down in tears inconsolable days afterwards, it never even occurred to me as a possibility.

It was one of the few things I had that kept me safe inside my own mind, it was a talisman against sadness, it was where I walked when I needed sanctuary, and now it feels like there is a giant pit in the middle of my former haven that I have to worry about falling into and being trapped.

because Good Omens made me a promise, as a viewer and a reader 7 years ago, that the world is saved because it is worth saving, that everybody lives, everybody, even telemarketers.

That Anti-Christ's grow up with their best friends in their Kingdom of Tadfield because that's enough of the world for them, that Witches fall in love with Witchfinders, that Prophetesses make their own destiny, that Death and all his friends will ride motorbikes to the end, but not today, no not today. Due in very small part, really just moral support, of a Demon and an Angel who wanted to stay, just a little bit longer, maybe another 6000 years, go for a picnic, dine at the Ritz. That promise was broken, if this is the legacy that they want to give Sir Terry Pratchett I would say its as bad as spitting on his grave.

Shame on them.

[abaddonhope]

There's a big difference in not liking GO3 and not accepting it. Honestly, if it had been better written, if everything but the double suicide had been even remotely in character, I might have ended up accepting it before I could even think clearly about it.

The first week after GO3, I was a mess, stunned and confused. I kept trying to find a path to resolve it in my heart, for the grieving process to be able to move at all. And I kept circling back to, maybe the way through is to accept it...? But every time, just the thought of doing so felt like such an immense betrayal-- of them, of everything I knew about who they were, of the world they toasted at the Ritz, of myself and everything I've ever learned from Good Omens.

So I am grateful for this one thing that s3 gave me: it was written badly enough, and maliciously enough, to show its hand. It was clumsy enough in its rage and meanness that even when I felt like my heart was bleeding out, at my core I knew could not trust it. That whatever the way through was, it would never be through accepting that as true or legitimate.

So yeah, I don't like GO3. In fact, I fucking despise GO3 and the straight cis men who wrote it, who made those appalling decisions. And I would still hate it if I accepted it, but I'm grateful I didn't have to.

[mr-nobody-s-room]

My requiem for the final season

[nimbusalba]

Asanthony...

I’m a bit slow on the uptake, I know, but I just realized what pisses me off so much about asanthony. I’ve been trying hard not to hate them because they are just fanfic human AU and I love human AUs. I fall in love with all those characters immediately and find the similarities and differences with the true Aziraphale and Crowley very interesting and warming. But the difference between all those other human AUs and asanthony is that all those other characters are not trying to replace the true Aziraphale and Crowley. They live their parallel love stories without anything to do with our boys. But these new usurpers came here and stole their happy ending and that breaks my heart (and angers the crap out of me). It’s not their fault, they were just written this way, but I can't help but resent them for it. Maybe I’m being petty, but everytime I see them it makes me feel sick. And sad. And so pissed.

(And I hate their hair so much! Aren't there hairstylists in that crappy new universe? Don't they have hair products? Mirrors at least?)

I'll spare all of us a picture of them, but here, take a happy aziracrow instead.

[nimbusalba]

And they made asanthony as lame as possible. It's like they demoted them (not them-them, but asa and anthony) to be the dimmed shadow of people.

What kind of name is Asa? (I'm spanish, you know what Asa means in spanish? Handle, grip) Why didn't they let Asa be the owner of the bookshop? He's just an employee! And he's still working for fucking metatron, for someone's sake! With all this, that hair and that golden chain on his neck he's the saddest, most pathetic caricature anyone could make of Aziraphale.

And Anthony Crowley (at least they allowed his right name) is just sad. Why are his books so bad he doesn't sell any? Why is he an author in the first place? He's a professor, why be also a bad author with unsellable books? Need I remind you that Crowley wouldn't be a bookseller even at gun point? Why those clothes? He could be at least a bit fashionable.

Let them be a little accomplished in their careers at least. Idk, they are just sad (imho).

[tsilvy]

friendly reminder that aziraphale made crowley smile in rome when he realized he was in a foul mood

that he blushed when he described crowley as a wily adversary (keeps me on my toes)

that he smiled when he realized the bentley was back without a scratch after having blown up

that he refused crowley a suicide pill

that he kept an eye on crowley for 26 years after 1941, then sought him out and gave him the holy water so that he didn't have to get it himself. but i can't have you risking your life. not even for something dangerous. if we must quote it then at least let's quote it right.

that he went to hell for crowley and made sure they wouldn't bother him anymore

that he only ever cared about crowley not being destroyed

that no way aziraphale didn't check on crowley in three years

friendly reminder that aziraphale would never give up crowley without a fight, not even if crowley asked

[crowleysgirl56]

TW: Neil Gaiman

So here’s an unfortunate reminder of the past. I’ve cut a screen grab of it rather than reblogging, because fuck that guy he doesn’t get another reblog out of me. I’ve also cut out the original questioner because I don’t think it’s fair to unnecessarily expose them even if the post is public.

I used to get so many notifications on people liking this reblog. Then when the allegations came out (which if I remember correctly was only days later) they thankfully trickled away. I got another one just now and it reminded me when I heard Aziraphale say pedometer in the finale it frankly felt like such a gut punch. Which is a shame considering it was during in what was, in my opinion, one of the best scenes in the finale.

It’s proof that what we got truly was all NG’s work and not something that was re-written as so many had assumed. The fact that this moment was also something preserved out of everything that had been cut, a thing specifically mentioned by NG and probably one of the last snippets we got before he was cancelled and thrust from this platform, is yet again another telling sign of how much the two other writers probably upheld his story and vision.

It has been sitting uneasy on my chest for over a fortnight now. I have more to say but will do so in another post.

[iforgiveyouprime]

Oh dear God...

Well, that really could suggest that the finale was in fact based on Neil's script, and it's entirely possible that what we saw was his original idea all along.

But I just don't understand...

Why does the ending go DIRECTLY against everything we saw in Season 1, which was built on both Terry's and Neil's ideas because it was based on the book, AND against the ideas of Season 2, which was written by Neil and another writer (sorry, I can't remember their name)?

The Flood episode in Season 1. The Job episode in Season 2. Adam's monologue in Season 1 and his realization that the whole thing, the destruction of Earth, the creation of a new humanity, to rule the Earth without all the familiar people and things he loves and values on it, is wrong. The Season 3 ending seems to directly contradict all of this.

The central themes of Seasons 1 and 2 were that humanity deserves to be saved exactly as it is. That every life, even one that seems small, insignificant, or ordinary, has value and deserves to exist.

The finale's ending DIRECTLY contradicts all of that.

And I just don't understand... Is Neil really that stupid? That bad as a writer? I understand that he's an awful person, but is he really such an idiot that his script genuinely, from the very beginning, contained exactly what we ended up seeing?

I'm sorry, but that's genuinely hard for me to believe.

As a person, he's a reprehensible bastard. But I still find it difficult to believe that he would consciously go against every major theme he himself explored in both Seasons 1 and 2, only to completely throw them away in the finale.

It's hard to believe, despite all his faults and all the terrible things he's done.

Even a child would notice plot contradictions and inconsistencies this obvious.

What the actual fuck, Neil?

[a-zira-ziraphale-fell]

We've talked about Crowley's biggest OOC moment in GO3 at length. Now let's talk about Aziraphale's.

Obviously Crowley's decision to give up on saving the world and his relationship with Aziraphale is the most egregious moment of character assassination, so I understand why the fandom has been tearing that apart.

But one thing I haven't seen touched on, that happens early on in the finale and left such a bad taste in my mouth I could hardly enjoy the comedic moments?

Aziraphale is TOO much of a bastard in the beginning. Specifically to Crowley.

When he comes back to Whickber Street and Mrs. Sandwich confronts Aziraphale about his absence, she accuses him of being a "taker." Of only coming back to Crowley to get something from him.

Aziraphale naturally is devastated by the implication and protests, "No! I love...Whickber Street" (obviously not what he really wanted to say)

And i thought, okay! This is going to be a moment of growth and realization, something Aziraphale will have to address at some point in the film in order to heal his relationship with Crowley.

Maybe he DOES ask too much of him sometimes, maybe he has to come to grips with the idea that asking Crowley to return to heaven was the wrong move, even if his intentions were good.

But then...instead of any of that happening, Aziraphale just tries to waltz back into Crowley's life, asking for his help, and showing a shocking lack of sensitivity to his broken heart.

When he called the Bentley "our car" again, I actually winced at the audacity. Aziraphale's audacity in S2 is charming and never crosses the line into actual hurtful territory, because he does it in a way to show Crowley how comfortable he is with him. He knows Crowley loves to spoil him and allows it, as a show of affection.

But him acting that way in S3? Right when he finds Crowley in the literal gutter, depressed and not in the fucking mood? That didn't sit right with me AT ALL.

The Aziraphale i know might be a bastard at times. He can be selfish, hedonistic, pampered, all that stuff. But he is also genuinely truly kindhearted, sweet, and loving at the same time.

I refuse to believe that Aziraphale would see his beloved in so much pain and heartache, and not treat him gently.

Did I want or expect him to apologize for going to heaven and trying to change the system? NO. I don't think he was wrong for that, and I'm glad he largely stood his ground about that decision.

I hate that the finale ended up basically saying in the end that he WAS wrong and that he really couldn't make a difference, but that's another matter entirely.

I just. I have a hard time swallowing the idea that Aziraphale would see the harm he (inadvertently, unwillingly) caused to the Being that he loves most in all creation and NOT treat him with some tenderness.

Would love your take on this if you don't mind, @iforgiveyouprime

[lookingatacupoftea]

More GO Metaverse/AU Musings

Many people have written eloquently about how, since the book/radio drama/S1 all end happily with character arcs wrapped up, there is plenty of justification for taking them as one's personal canon. This is probably going to be my approach.

However, I do think there is justification in the structure of the show to consider each season as its own AU. I'm not saying you have to interpret it this way, just offering the possibility.

Season 1 begins with the OG wall meet-cute, which establishes A&C as a pair of slightly befuddled agents from opposing sides who have more in common with each other than head office. Of the three seasons, this one retains the most of the Cold War spy setting from the book, with them meeting in public places and expressing fear about getting into trouble with their head offices. Also, this is the only season that mentions the Arrangement, which is a concept that only makes sense if they both know that angels and demons are the same.

Season 2 introduces a new meet-cute that, to me, can be read as resetting the story into an AU about religious institutional trauma. The two angels are more like church friends, with one about to be ex-churched, and while the fear of their institutions persists, the conflicts between them throughout S2 seem more philosophical than S1's more practical and obvious emergency. In addition, among a number of moments that I find contradictory to S1, there is no hint of the Arrangement and generally A&C seem to lack the common knowledge and experience that I read them as having in S1.

Season 3 doesn't have breathing room for much of this kind of analysis, but the third meet-cute seems to launch us into a war AU with A&C as soldiers on opposite sides of an unbridgeable divide, who will never find more than a moment's peace together, which leads into their final decision. This is a huge reversal from S1, which showed characters successfully building relationships across their differences.

Chronologically, the only way I can make all three meet-cute scenes make sense in order is by assuming external manipulation. Their memories and/or their Book of Life pages must have been altered, or we must be watching them in different timelines or universes.

This is not the only issue I have when trying to consider the story chronologically. To me, the S1 flashbacks show a slowly developing relationship, allies to friends to lovers, over the centuries. The S2 minisodes disrupt that flow, with the Job flashback getting very intimate, then whipping back to a more distanced tone at the Crucifixion. And how do we get from Bastille Aziraphale, who is experiencing in real time what a hungry and oppressed populace will do, to the Aziraphale of Edinburgh 1827?

I do think S2 and S3 have more connective tissue to each other than to S1, so again, a S1-only canon makes a ton of sense. But I think, if it helps, that you can also apply an AU lens to each season.

[nimbusalba]

Universes

And I realized something else (yes, I’m very insightful today, ok?). They stole my fantasy.

I was happily hiding myself from the horrors of the world (very real horrible horrors we are currently living in this dystopian world) in my lovely fantasy world with angels and demons who could fall in love, with kids who could stop Armageddon, with witches who predicted the future and witchfinders who fell in love with them.

But they (those horrible cishet men) took that fantasy world and erased it and made it to never have existed at all. And replaced it with you know what? The horrible dystopian world of horrors we live in.

They (those horrible cishet men) must feel very smug thinking they are very clever, but if I wanted to see a story about the fucking real universe, the one where there’s no magic, I wouldn’t be watching and reading fucking fantasy, you know? They missed their target audience.

I know I like to put here some nice gif of the boys but... I just want to watch everything burn rn.

[enthusiasteditor]

Just a little thank you to every Good Omens fanfiction writer out there. Whether it’s for the laughs, the heartbreak, the comfort, the escapism, the smut, the softness, or the “just one more chapter at 2am” moments, you’ve done, you’re doing, and I’m sure you’ll keep doing an amazing job. This fandom wouldn’t feel like home without you ❤️

[abaddonhope]

I refuse to legitimize a work that shows such contempt and even outright malice towards the fans who made its creation possible.

[darkwillowz]

"I love how Asa & Anthony are Crowley & Aziraphale without all the trauma. They can finally be happy now without the past haunting them"

Are those with a difficult past not worth the gift of healing & finding peace & love later in life despite the trauma they endured?

Why must they erase themselves and become new people in order to be happy?

seriously, I feel like some of you are not hearing what your words are implying to those of us who are upset with how things ended

A lot of us have our own personal trauma that we desperately hope we will endure & survive from. We wish we had stories that show it's possible.

We yearn for stories that show that despite growing up in a life controlled by abusive systems and because of it having suffered many struggles, theres is a possibility of a chance we can still find happiness and never have to change who we are or sacrifice our lives & current relationships in order to get it.

We thought Good Omens was gonna show us that....and that's why the ending hurts us.

Yes it's a cute ending for Asa & Anthony and yes we can recognize the beauty in the "Love finds away" and "they will find each other in ever universe" trope...

...But for Aziraphale & Crowley, whom we see ourselves in....the fact that they had to sacrafice themselves and their current life together and never getting to know that their souls will live on in two other individual humans who get to have the happiness they desperately wanted...

...its just heartbreaking....and it tells a message that if we are suffering in this life then our only hope is the next...

Those who have experienced what Aziraphale and Crowley have will understand.