Here for ineffable reasons

[angelsandfelines]

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[alrischapisces]

So beautiful.

[alrischapisces]

So, I clearly have no idea where this fic is going and where it will end up. I'm not even halfway done with it. But every so often, some line just hits so hard in the wake of the finale. Today it was Crowley saying this:

“Just because it all has to end doesn’t mean we have to be the ones to end it.”

Thank you. Yes.

Someone On Tumblr post-GO3 said that "Are We Meant to Read the Footnotes?" by @riathedreamer was their personal "real" ending to the series, and, for right now, I can see why. So far, reading it has been healing for me. I hope it continues. We'll see. For now, it has felt so good to see these characters portrayed so faithfully, so consistently, and so carefully, compared to the disaster that was the finale.

[alrischapisces]

Post by @curiouspupsicle · 1 image

💬 14  🔁 382  ❤️ 721 · Good Omens is a Transformative Work · It has been since the very beginning. NG (fuck NG) thought of a book plot whe

[alrischapisces]

The very last word of the book Good Omens is..."forever."

[theonevoice]

Alpha Centauri

[a quick color study that near the end claimed fanart status, so here you go]

[alrischapisces]

I am so often in awe of the people here who say they are doing "a quick study" and then make art that takes your breath away.

[twilightofthesandwiches]

Today's vent:

[poorlyoriginalthief]

In hindsight, I guess it's obvious that the only way Season 2 was meant to be a bridge was as a bridge from Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, the collaborative effort between Terry Pratchett and NG to Good Omens: The Story of Crowley the Extremely Cool Demon Who Was Also the Best Angel, the story as NG originally envisioned it. And it is equally obvious to me that he did not understand how Crowley had evolved from his original idea and that he resented Aziraphale's inclusion in the story at all. They were never meant to be a couple in his eyes but he was happy to play with the idea as a way to make his self-insert suffering martyr version of Crowley even sadder by turning Aziraphale from a co-main character and equal partner into an unworthy love interest who never really understood him.

And it all just pisses me off because while I can dismiss S3 as a piece of shit written by a piece of shit, part of the legacy it leaves behind is the poisoning of the fandom, now and in the future, against a character I have loved for 30 years.

(I know Crowley was treated very badly by Season 3 too. Please don't @ me to tell me how much worse he had it - that was the intent. They were both done extremely dirty, but you're meant to sympathize with Crowley and to see Aziraphale as cruel.)

What a "tribute" to an alleged friend, completely assassinating the character he created for your shared story just to elevate your own. "For Terry" indeed. 😠

[alrischapisces]

All of this. ☝️

[crowleysgarden]

What genuinely frustrates me is the scene with Michael. It feels like it was written by people who base their understanding of the characters on fanfiction stereotypes rather than on the actual show or the book.

Aziraphale wouldn’t have kept fluttering around Michael, endlessly talking about forgiveness. He might have tried that for a moment—because compassion is part of who he is—but the second it became clear it wasn’t working, he would have switched modes and done whatever was necessary to fix the situation. That’s exactly the pattern we’ve seen from him throughout the story.

This doesn’t even reflect how Aziraphale actually behaves in situations of real danger. When it mattered, Aziraphale switched gears completely and pointed a gun at Adam. When it mattered, he tore the halo from his own forehead and incinerated the demons. Above all else, Aziraphale is a fighter—a warrior. He may not enjoy that part of himself, but that’s how an angel responds when the situation becomes critical: with absolute resolve. He doesn’t stand there fluttering around the person who’s destroying everything. This is one of the most out-of-character portrayals of Aziraphale in s3.

[alrischapisces]

The whole undercurrent of forgiveness as a theme in the TV show is weird and compounds my claims that it was poorly written. I think Gaiman wanted to say something about forgiveness as unnecessary and unhelpful -- but it is so underdeveloped that it falls flat.

One might argue that it is because of the 90 min time frame, but I think a better writer with a more coherent thesis would have been able to deliver it. I think Gaiman isn't able to say more directly and impactfully what he wants to say because he knows, deep down, that he is actually wrong.

I think he wants to say that there is only acceptance of how people are, not forgiveness because they cannot accept being forgiven for being who they are and doing what they have done. But, first of all, it isn't true that forgiveness is unnecessary. It's real. It does real work in people's lives. We can't just wish away something that has arisen in our vocabulary and behavior just because we have (read=he has) issues with it.

Second, in order to make a point like that one, then one person has to demonstrate it by being wrong about forgiveness, and of course that is Aziraphale. Again, Gaiman seems to want to make Aziraphale go from a fully developed character to a morality play cut-out of Pious Error. And that destroys the beautiful dynamic of ying-yang that the book and first season maintained, and not just in Crowley and Aziraphale, but also in Anathema & Newt, Tracy & Shadwell, The Them & The Johnsonites, etc.

Third, it's impossible to take this thesis outside of the context of Gaiman's biography and his apparent moral ambivalence between wanting to be liked and wanting to abuse. Suggesting that we must simply accept who everyone is, that forgiveness isn't required because there's nothing wrong with someone, is a nice way to sidestep the reality of violence, the reality of harm. It sounds deep and philosophical, but it's just a card trick, a cop-out, by someone who doesn't want to face reality.

The acceptance vs. forgiveness motif that Gaiman seems to want to play with might resemble the notion of acceptance that is in Good Omens between ancestral enemies and ideological opponents -- but that notion stopped dead short in front of violence and harm, i.e., ending the world. We were not told that it's fine to be the antichrist and destroy everything. Destruction is the opposite of acceptance.

Anyway, I didn't mean to overwhelm OP's original post, but I think there was more going on in that scene than just Aziraphale being ooc (and he totally was). But he had to be ooc because he had ceased to be a character and become a vehicle for A Point. Because it wasn't a very good point, one that could face scrutiny, Aziraphale became a stooge. He had to. It was a travesty.

[daily-crowley]

Crowley Of The Day: they’re happy and telling stories of all their crazy adventures together. This was the real ending trust me. 

[alrischapisces]

Here's the link to more of this commentary, but these two are the ones I wanted to share.

[honourablejester]

I don’t know why that affected me so strongly, but I’m watching a youtube video on disasters on Lake Huron, and the first one involves a coal freighter that was lost in the White Hurricane of 1913 called the SS Argus. Everyone on the ship was lost. But it’s mentioned that the captain’s body washed up later, and was found without a life jacket. So they thought, based partly on testimony of another ship that thought they saw them go down, that it just happened too fast for him to have time to get his jacket. But then another body was found, that of the second cook, and she was found wearing the life jacket marked ‘captain’. And that’s …

It didn’t work. It didn’t save her. But it’s so very possible that he spent his last moments alive trying to save someone else, one of his crew, and they probably both knew that it wouldn’t work, that there wasn’t a lot of hope in a blizzard on the lakes in November, but he tried … he tried anyway. Even if it did nothing but maybe make her body easier for her family to find.

You know that Mr Rogers thing of ‘look for the helpers’? How many times has someone, facing the end, done something tiny and fragile and maybe hopeless just to try and help someone else? Whether it works or not. How many people went to their graves at least trying?

That has to say something about us. As a people. As monstrous as we sometimes (perhaps often) are, so many times we were also …

Whoever saves one life, saves the whole world.

And sometimes you can’t save one life, sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes there’s no getting out of this for anyone, but … try anyway. Because it matters anyway.

And maybe no one will ever know. But maybe also some day more than a century down the line, maybe some idiot will be crying into her coffee because of what you died trying.

[wordsthativelost]

So, the Good Omens finale. Yes, I hated it. There were bits and pieces I found charming, but on the whole, to me it betrayed everything we were told to expect, everything that Good Omens *stood for*: hope, kindness, doing your best with the world you have, and love conquering all. I am truly glad that people enjoyed it! More joy in the world is an unqualified good! I would never say "You should feel as sad and angry as I do" - what kind of person wishes that on anyone else? But I see a lot of finale enjoyers in the fandom who aren't content to leave it there. They are BIG MAD that there are so many out there who *dare* to be unhappy. They accuse us of "ruining" things for them. And I knew this reminded me of something, but I couldn't figure out what.

Today I remembered.

From the conclusion to Abraham Lincoln's famous Cooper Union Address: "The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us."

I am not going to cease calling despair, suicide, and genocide tragic. I am not going to join you in calling it meaningful and happy. Sorry (not sorry) if that yucks your yum.

[alrischapisces]

I feel like waving this fic passage around like a banner:

"“The prophecy didn’t mention water,” Aziraphale spoke. “Only fire.”

Smoke. Flames. Papers blackening, drifting in the air as ashes.

Crowley blinked, pulling himself out of the memories. The back of his throat hurt. “So?”

“I made my choice a long time ago.” 

Instead of trembling, Aziraphale was now terribly still. His breathing had evened out, his exhales slow and long. A sense of purpose had calmed him, but at his words, a sudden dread overtook Crowley, freezing him on the spot. 

“Even if I - if I refrained from admitting so. The world didn’t deserve to end. And neither do you, my dear. If my fate - the fire, the hellfire - if it’s been said - I am ready to face it if it means you might get to enjoy the world we’ve saved.”

Crowley blinked as Aziraphale’s watery smile came into focus. It was small and apologetic, but still sincere. He meant what he was saying.

No.

The demon’s body refused to cooperate. As the realization set in, he wanted to scream, hiss, curse the angel for even suggesting this very idea, but he remained quiet, terrified.

“I would burn,” the angel told him, but then Crowley had wrapped himself around him, muffling the final two words as his hand cupped the back of Aziraphale’s head, cradling him against his chest, “for you.”

He did, however, hear them, and his psyche stored them away somewhere deeper, somewhere safe to unpack later.

For now, he just held the angel and dared the world to try and take him away from him again.

“No, you won’t,” he hissed as a promise. There was no reflection to prove it, but he knew himself well enough to know that his eyes had turned completely yellow at the mere thought, of the image of Aziraphale surrounded by flames - 

It wouldn’t happen. Crowley wouldn’t let it happen. Then it didn’t matter what an old book said because Crowley wouldn’t break his promise. 

“The prophecy -”

“Says to play with fire, not to give up and walk right into it.” Crowley loosened his grip enough for Aziraphale to pull away so they could look at each other once more, teary-eyed and weary. “We’re not doing that. We’re not giving up. We’re not gonna make it any easier for them.” Crowley jabbed a finger at Aziraphale’s chest, ignoring how he winced. “Our side. We defend our side -”

“That’s what I aim to do!”

“Not like that.” Crowley barely resisted the urge to shake the angel in order to make him see reason. “I won’t let you. So stop being an idiot, and think of something else.”

It scared him more than he liked to admit, the stubborn look in Aziraphale’s eyes. It’d been stronger than mere resignation. Crowley had thought it to be from realization, and he’d been right, but where he’d been relieved at the hope of an escape plan, Aziraphale had found comfort in the option of self-sacrifice.

As if it was easy. As if it was the right thing to do.

A cold shiver ran down Crowley’s spine.

“I can’t,” Aziraphale cried, and he rocked back and forth in his grief. “I’ve tried! The whole trip back and - all I can think of is hellfire and holy water and you -” 

“And you,” Crowley reminded the angel of his own existence. “It’s you and me. If there’s hellfire involved, then there’ll be holy water too. We’re in this together. That means we’re going to have to be clever. Not self-sacrificial.”

“You - You said -”

“I know what I said, and I’m sorry.”

He’d thought - He’d thought he’d spoken his last words to Aziraphale. That the last thing he’d told the angel was a cruel lie.

When I'm off in the stars, I won't even think about you.

They could drown him in holy water, and Crowley’s last thought would always be Aziraphale.

“Don’t be,” Aziraphale told him softly, eyes filled with a thousand apologies. “I’ve been rather stupid for a while now.”

“Letting Heaven burn you is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.” Crowley barely managed to keep his voice from shaking. “So we’re not doing that.”"

-- Ria the Dreamer, "Are We Meant to Read the Footnotes?"

@riathedreamer

[emotional-support-demon-crowley]

What could have been...

Good Omens was such a slam dunk of a best love story of all time.

I think it might be rooted in the fact that it wasn't originally written as an obvious love story, but it slotted easily (some might even say perfectly) into that genre when it was nudged in that direction.

It should have been enemies to lovers, except Crowley and Aziraphale were so compatible they just immediately dropped the enemies part in every way except for keeping up appearances. And it was the slowest of slow burns because they both knew that was the only way they could be together on Earth as themselves.

But the story! More than 6000 years of just... existing as close to each other as they possibly could while also staying safe. All of human history while they pined and made dangerous personal choices to keep each other from danger. And then they saved the world together, even though they weren't very good at it overall, they tried very hard the whole time and they did what needed to be done in the end. And they each went in the place of the other to what should have been their deaths and they came out the other side finally free to explore what it could mean for them to really be together.

Not only is it a glorious setup, it can also be read in so many different ways. Ace? Yes. Gay? Yes. Something else that can't be defined? Yes. Platonic? Yes. Boiling over with barely restrained sexual tension? Yes. Good Omens was one of the most representative friendly depictions of love in modern media. The type of thing that's incredibly difficult to set out to do on purpose from the very beginning because usually the hand of the author makes it all feel too contrived.

But some gritty realist didn't see the love between Crowley and Aziraphale for the gift that it was. He thought it would be a more interesting option to have them fall out of love over the course of a single conversation. I'll be the first to admit there were cracks in their relationship prior to the final 15 (lord knows I've written fanfic about it), but I'll never believe that those cracks, most of which were necessitated by their inability to express their feelings freely until after season 1 because of the threat of being found out, could ever outbalance everything else that they had together, everything they felt for one another for so, so long. In the moment that it was happening would it be enough to form a rift? Yes. Permanently? No! Of course not!

But we're supposed to believe that neither of them ever had enough of a moment of regret or doubt or loneliness that they were willing to suck it up and reach out for any reason? Not even to check in? Not even to say, 'hey, I think we might have misunderstood each other fundamentally and in the heat of the moment, I hurt you in ways I never wanted to see you hurt and it's brought me nothing but pain every moment since...'?

We're supposed to buy that they both agreed to willingly walk into the very depths of Heaven/Hell for each other on the assumption that they correctly predicted how their sides would try to kill them, but if they had been wrong, they would have been forced to endure whatever alternate punishment had been devise, but talk through their issues? Oof, no thanks.

So, instead of exploring how they could still find a way back to each other and repair that damage in season 3, the answer is cease to exist. With the honest-from-god promise they would not be made new in any way, shape, or form on the new, godless Earth they requested but had no way to confirm was actually made. And never once did they stop to think that both of their lives were better when they existed with the understanding that nearby each other might be the best they'd ever get?

It could have been something incredible. It should have been a shining beacon of comfort and hope. It would have stood the test of time and been talked about for the rare, positive depiction it was. But I guess happy endings and true love stories just aren't worth writing for some people.

Apparently, I'm still more than just a little bit miffed about all of this.

[alrischapisces]

Isn't it ironic that the vile man so desperately wants to be thought of as a Great Writer, but in his effort to be considered thus he ended up destroying what actually could have been great and lasting art?

[depraveddame]

I’ve been hearing this in my head since May 13th 4:30am EST so now everyone else has to as well lol

[slowlystupendousdelusion]

Still can't get my head round them bothering to set up the Metatron's proposition to Aziraphale so it's shown in discontinuous flashback... for literally no reason whatsoever

[adverbian]

THANK YOU. This has been on my mind since S2 came out. Presenting something that way is established filmmaking language for “we aren’t showing you everything.” It sets up a mystery. It makes you curious to find out the full story. You know something will be revealed that recontextualizes the bits you’ve seen, and you keep watching because you’re dying to know what it is.

That’s basically what discontinuous flashback is for, in film. You don’t do a sequence that way unless you’re setting up a reveal.

And in Good Omens, they used it to show… a straightforward, linear, objective recounting of events?

What are we even doing here?

[onceuponapuffin]

Made by @bushybritches

Each side is scared of judgement from the other. Let's share this around so people can see just how much support and love there actually is.