Fire and flame... a.k.a. full circle with the Great Plan
The Good Omens Finale got a lot less runtime than it would have deserved in our hearts. Therefore, a lot of things got very little explanation... including the Eternal Flame. (Seriously, please, tell me more about it...)
However, in hindsight, this particular thing might have actually been set up a long time ago... as the final part of the Great Plan. (Not necessarily the Ineffable Plan, if that's still a separate thing that exists - your mileage may vary on this.) It's not set up in a way that we could have foreseen, but looking back at the old expectations of Heaven and Hell after watching S3... we were told what would happen to the world. (We had just optimistically believed it was all averted by Adam's choice, supported by Aziraphale and Crowley.)
Back in Season 1, we got to hear how the world is supposed to end from Lord Beelzebub:
"The Great Plan! It is written. There shall be a world, and it shall last for 6000 years and end in fire and flame."
The emphasis is all mine, because... it has been roughly 6000 years, and guess how the world is forced to end? By all the pages of the Book of Life, which pretty much define the World all in all, being burnt up in the Eternal Flame.
Poor Lord B even insists:
"But it is... written."
Yup, the whole Universe was written into the Book of Life. And then it ended (up) in fire and flame.
However damaged her mind might be by what she did, Michael is very aware of this fact all the way to the end, too.
She says: "I... I'm the only angel who can make the original plan work. The Great Plan."
The whole thing is a little bit like Agnes' prophecies: it makes little to no sense upon reading/hearing it, but once the event has ectually happened, we can see the meaning in retrospect.
Despite everything, Season 3 tried to tie up a lot of loose ends and tie into previously established canon. Where it succeeds, it does so in a very satisfying way. I really do wish we could have had more time 💔
Good Omens, Trauma, LGBTQIA+ Representation, and Stories
Do not read further if you want to watch the Good Omens finale unspoiled. Do not. Go back! Retreat! Stop!
Alright, you continuing is on you.
To say the least, the finale has been divisive (as predicted, though we didn’t know it would be this bad). I think a lot of the fandom has been processing it and coming to their own acceptance or coping mechanisms. I wanted to give myself some time to digest before I dived into “but did you like it?” because truly the answer is yes, but.
Before dig in, I first want to say this: Thank you to the creators for giving us your ending. For fighting for us. For doing what you thought was best. We know that it was not easy, and we appreciate you. To my fellow fans: yelling at anyone is NOT the way to solve any of your feelings. That goes for creators AND fellow fans whose opinion differs. We are all going to have differing views, and that’s okay. After all, we now have a multiverse of sand boxes to play in (and play we shall, I am sure).
We can start with what I loved: Aziraphale saving Crowley, the crosswords level of sass, Joshua, and Harry the Fish all left me with giant smiles. I wish we had been able to see more of this. You could tell the stories were rushed, but nonetheless they were able to shine some still.
It’s also not anyone’s fault the story was rushed. We knew that was going to be the case condensing six episodes down to one. It would never be able to solve all the hanging plot lines and Chekov’s guns that were out there.
Having said that, let’s dig into the gritty of where I saw a problem (after all, I haven’t seen a single person yet say they disliked Jesus). We’re once again left with the problem of a final fifteen, but part of it started before.
Repeatedly I’ve seen posts celebrating that Aziraphale and Crowley are now able to live without their trauma. That they can live without the pain they have suffered and the fear and simply be. And yes, that is beautiful (if a bit unrealistic, given the state of the real world). And as someone with extensive trauma, a chronic illness, married to a disabled person I wonder if they understand some of the message that’s being given.
Because between the lines of this is that Aziraphale and Crowley could not be given a happy ending. They needed their trauma removed to do so. That Crowley, in his depressive state, was far too broken to be able to come out the other side. And that he should not be given time to heal from that condition in order to make a decision fully, based in his love for Earth yes but also his love for himself and for Aziraphale.
That the solution to your depression is a suicide that helps others live their best lives.
I don’t think that the writers intended this to be the message. I truly don’t. Sometimes you have to have been through the worst to see it, and to be honest I’m delighted for the portion of the fandom that doesn’t see this part of the story. I wish that for everyone.
As someone who has, relatively recently, been in Crowley’s position I am grateful no one gave me the option to sacrifice myself for the world. I’d have taken it. Now? Now I’d tell God to go fuck herself. Because despite trauma, hope and joy find a way. Because I live in a world where my marriage is often invalidated and derided. Where my spouse has to constantly face a battle I can’t quite grasp where the world tells them they shouldn’t exist. Where the two of us regularly have to face our trauma, together. And despite it find the ability to laugh so hard we’re crying. We have found connections and found family and beauty, despite it all.
And that is the ending that our Ineffables deserved. The ability to finally find themselves without needing their history to be erased. To know that every stolen moment and bit of hope was, indeed, worth the battle to get to the end. Not to be told that both they and the world were too broken to save. Best start from scratch.
I will mourn them. And in doing so it is with the added weight of the queer people who never found their way out. Who were told they were too broken for this world. Who could no longer find hope. I will mourn for my community just as my first thought yesterday when the finale was done was how to best help them. What support would a community suddenly given this message need?
I know the creators did their best, and I will not hurl hatred at them. But I will, this one time, say I think that they were irresponsible. They valued art over the community around it. It was their choice to make, and I respect what they were trying to accomplish and the beauty they were trying to create. And I know many will see that beauty and they will receive their accolades.
This post is not for those who are pleased. It’s for the rest of you. The ones in the fandom that are aching and seeing yourselves erased and tired of fighting. Please don’t give up. Hope is there. Love is real and it does not only create universes but heals the pain within us.
Maybe 97 minutes simply wasn’t enough. If Aziraphale and Crowley had been given years to heal in their garden bookshop and come to their decision, I could understand it far more. If we had time to show multiple multiverse endings, including one where our Ineffables stood at the end and smiled at what they had created when they thought they’d be sacrificing themselves, that I would have understood a bit more. Perhaps if they’d instead told God to leave their universe and let them finally figure it out, something given through the wisdom of child-Adam back in season one. Maybe they didn’t have the story time for all of these. It could simply be that we can solve the problem with only a little more time.
I do think a multiverse was intended as Aziraphale and Crowley’s choice. I think they should have been able to see it through the snow globe that now sits on their mantle in my heart. A story in which we can have all of our stories and see all the possible choices and worlds we could have inhabited.
To see what we would have been without the trauma is not a bad thing. Nor are all the stories we have created for Aziraphale and Crowley. Thousands of them! All a slightly different version. All a slightly different them. That we have watched fall in love time after time.
Yet we are still valid as we are. Broken and trying and finding hope in the ashes. Because we, and 7 billion humans, all deserve the chance to hope that we can find a better world without sacrificing ourselves to do so.
I won’t be leaving the Good Omens fandom, not by a long stretch. This hasn’t been my first time that I’ve disagreed with canon nor will it be the last, I’m sure. I hope that the rest of you that are struggling with this ending also stay. There will be AUs and fix it fics and more stories for us all to tell.
I would be remiss if I did not say this: I am sure with time I am going to love Asa and Anthony. After all, I was writing a human AU with my partner as I fell in love with them. When I saw the ending, the bit of smile I did receive was the beauty of seeing two people who are no longer young still being able to find each other and fall in love.
I have seen many takes saying that they are sad that Asa and Anthony will only get twenty years. As someone who is destined to have much the same time frame in my life with my partner who I adore more than the world itself, this feels a bit like a slap in the face. Because that is still years of joy. It has still been us waking up next to each other each day and planting our garden for our future. I would have loved to have an entire life with them, but I am so very, very happy to get the time that we will have.
I have also seen takes saying Asa and Anthony are not canon nonbinary people any longer. They’re not canon cis, either. And until we adjust our thoughts to understanding we do not know someone’s gender or sexuality unless they tell us, we will continue to be in a world in which nonbinary people feel unaccepted at heart.
I am glad we finally have some sort of closure. I look forward to diving back into the sandbox (and have many thoughts already about doing so). I do, truly, believe that Aziraphale and Crowley could not have been erased from the Book of Life nor their world from existence. They’re still out there. After all, we have not forgotten them and I know I for one never will. They have given me far too much over the years.
Stay safe, fandom. Love one another and help each other through this. Don’t be angry at others for seeing things differently to each other, we are all different and that is something to celebrate. It’s not an attack on how you see the world, truly. Because we are all flawed beings trying to find our own joy.
Guess who stared at the burning pages of the Book of Life until stuff became readable around the fire and Crowley's hand? This idiot :D
And here's what it says on the page for the rubber duck (and all the other pages I've managed to glare at long enough, save for Uriel's, who gets her own text*)... The layout is a bit strange and there are helpful repetitions of the phrases, so this how I think it's supposed to go:
"Through the loving command of God in Her infinite wisdom and delight in creation, Alpha Centauri, one of the most magnificent constellations in the heavens was brought into being. She entrusted its formation to one of Her most beloved angels, a servant of radiant skill and devotion. The angel was charged with weaving light and harmony into a masterpiece that would forever testify to the majesty of the divine."
I was not prepared to feel many of the feelings of the finale, but I was also most certainly not prepared to read praises of Crowley like this when I just wanted to peek at how you define a rubber duck 😭
*edit for completeness: the Whickber Street page gets its own text, too. It's just more difficult for me to make it out because a) the page itself is burning and b) it's full of shop names that I only half-remember. The shopkeepers' association would not be happy with me 😅
While it was omitted from the documentary, my brush with the demon Shax wasn’t my only encounter on the way home from Edinburgh...
It would have been difficult to recreate it here without the aid of a member of the Scottish police but, thanks to the generosity and hard work of a group of wonderful artists, you can see how events unfolded in this ‘animatical’ cinematography.
Please enjoy it, and do take time to go back and admire all the drawings, as some appear only briefly, and all are worth your attention.
For the curious, the music on the radio is Waltz II, from Shostakovich’s ‘Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1’. It might be relatively modern, compared to my usual listening fare, but it is most certainly not ‘bebop’.
Hi, my name is Andrea (Salva on twitter and tumblr). I live in the UK but m… Andrea Araujo needs your support for Help my family move before
So, the GoFundMe has all the details, but basically my family is being asked to move out because the landlord is selling the flat. Due to their age (everyone is above 70) and circumstances (my gran, 96, needs 24/7 care and the state agents need someone that is working full time and has been for at least a year) it's impossible to rent a new flat unless we give about a years deposit. We don't have that and there's no way to actually get that money in time.
So, any help, be it sharing or anything at all that you can do to help would be incredibly appreciated. I know its a lot to ask and I know there are a lot of people in need, but this is my family and I don't really know what to do now.
In 24hrs you marvelous people have shown me so much generosity it has brought tears to my eyes. My family are speechless and so grateful. We have fundraised 476 euros so far. Thank you all who have shared and donated. Words cannot express how much this means to us. Please keep sharing.
This piece was inspired by my recent visit to the stained glass museum. I'm also planing to make a matching piece with Aziraphale (that's why theres only half of the earth on this one). The background is supposed to be knda like a hourglass because of Crowleys connection to time
I hope you'll enjoy the artwork and have a great day everyone 💙
when you think of it. Bildad the Shuhite's last 24 hours in the minisode not bloody optimal
getting a combat mission to kill everything his buddy Job owns just because She got into some stupid bet
the kids too??? horrid
right in the middle of growing out his hair awkwardly that angle appears. perfect timing to get thwarted. not like that
oh no he's now legit pissed, like it's HIS fault
good (bad) that Bildad has a plan. bad (good) that Aziraphale follows around like a lost sheep, ready to blow his cover anytime. not like that
cue the mortifying ordeal of being known
angel's smugness visible from alpha centauri and he can't even wipe it off with an angry kiss
the kids remain alive but at the cost of annoyance. human twink has the gall to flirt with Aziraphale right in front of his demonic eyes. is nothing sacred anymore
unsolicited temptation backfires badly ( he didn't sign up for food kink development. Regret)
no let me say it again: sexual awakening through ox ribs what even is his life
angel insinuates being the only demon in existence who tries to go his own way seems lonely -> needs to get wasted immediately
literally so hungover the next day he can barely stand and THIS is the moment he witnesses former Mum talking to a human, probably for the first time since Eden. actually stop here, try to step into his shoes and watch the arrow on a scale for secondhand embarrassment doing a full 360°
magical obstetrics time (he still doesn't know where babies come from)
and to top it off: the devastating vision of Aziraphale almost crying
to conclude, pour one out for Bildad the poor bastard deserves it.
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