he in the way crowley is male-ish. they in the way crowley isnât really human? so gender doesnât really apply? she in the way that the fandom has decided crowley is sometimes she.
i can totally see a world in which crowley and aziraphale are in a ~physically intimate~ relationship and crowley uses the phrase âwell fuck me gently with a chainsawâ and aziraphaleâs mind just. turns off
i find it so funny that in good omens fanfics gabriel is always aziraphaleâs toxic ex bf or horrible boss or something and then beelzebub is like crowleyâs best friend
and i cannot figure out why that is! imo they basically serve the same roles (beelzebub did try to kill crowleyâŚ)
it absolutely kills me when people say that representation in media isn't that big of a deal because seeing Crowley's characterization in Good Omens and the way the fandom has responded to it has completely changed the way I see my own gender! it really got me in touch with my own femininity and the way i view different pronouns! literally, getting some genderqueer rep in tv changed my life.
i didn't realize i was trans until i was in college. that was the first time i was exposed to the language to express what i had been repressing for nearly a decade. it was the first time i was able to meet genderqueer people. it was the first time i had the space to explore my identity around people who not only accepted me no matter how i dressed or what i called myself, but actively encouraged and celebrated this exploration.
if I'd been able to see something that represents transness the way good omens does when i was twelve, it likely would have changed my life. representation matters. trans kids knowing that there's a future for them MATTERS.
the reaction photos that the good omens fandom uses absolutely kill me! every time i see fanart of aziracrow on pinterest there are the stupidest and funniest pictures ive ever seen in the comments (usually mixed in with comments like ângkâ and âthank you for my pornographyâ)
ok but imagine crowley discovering chappell roan after s2e6
like i see him hearing casual and losing his mind over it for a week and then going and listening to all of the rise and fall of a midwest princess. and when he gets to coffee he has to turn it off and doesnât listen to the rest of the album for another two weeks.
finally he goes back and when he gets to (back to back!) picture you and kaleidoscope he decides chappell roan must be a demon because (un)holy SHIT
and then he finds good luck babe and omg! heâs like you know what yeah you couldâve had me! but you fucked up! (but he still canât listen to coffee without bawling)
but. a few weeks later he sees a video of her performing subway. and boy does that take him back to square one
*aziraphale saying his own name with a silly little moustache drawn on* *aziraphale with tiny glasses* *aziraphale straightnening his bowtie* *aziraphale smiling tenderly*
Aziraphaleâs Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheenâs Morality
Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.
Iâve had time to process Aziraphaleâs choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphaleâs character. I think what happened was also Aziraphaleâs own conscious choiceââas a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.
Since November 2022 Iâve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,
We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. Itâs sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and âoh itâs nice.â And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the lightâŚ. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think thatâs a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.
I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think thatâs what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphaleâs story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed thatââtruly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.
Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didnât understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)
Thatâs why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.
Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.
But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.
And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.
I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didnât, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)
But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasnât influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasnât a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.
Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something heâs very good at it).
Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heavenâs armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.
(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)
At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didnât have Godâs ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He canât take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. Thatâs why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Jobâs children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldnât get through to God, and heâs not going through that again.
âWe could make a difference.â We could save everyone.
Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing goodââand having to âlook the dark in the face to be truly good.â Thatâs what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. Thatâs what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lionâs Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.
Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphaleâs change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphaleâs courage.
But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they donât need Heaven. And heâs right. Aziraphale knows heâs right.
Aziraphale doesnât need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just donât know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)
Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.
Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, thatâs exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. âYouâre exactly is different from my exactly.â
____
In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.
Sheen: âI felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] â which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.â In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.
Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.
And thatâs why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldnât understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.
And heâs still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.
possibly my LEAST favorite trope in good omens fanfics is aziraphale hating his body or being self-conscious about it!!!
his love is so pure and immense that he could never imagine loving crowley less based on the shape of his body (and heâs seen him as a snake!!!) or judging anyone else based on the shape of theirs. although he has spent lots of time with humanity and living as a human, he still doesnât completely get it because he isnât human (ex: whats that lovely human expression?)
also, he picked his body! he chose it! we know that size and shape are things that angels and demons can choose (again, snake crowley)
we finally have a character who isnât stick-skinny who seemingly loves himself unconditionally, whose partner loves him unconditionally, and whose fans love him unconditionally. letâs celebrate that! itâs important!
tldr: aziraphale wouldnât even be able to conceptualize being self-conscious about his body because he loves humanity so much
one of my favorite things about the good omens fandom is how everyone is simultaneously soooo observent but also soooo delusional
like to finally understand the genius of the show you have to have these subtle observations (ex: crowley is always on the right unless Something Is Up), but then you also get super complex theories about how since the clock moved 15 mins during The Kiss, Something Is Up (which then people who worked on the show need to explain that sometimes there are just errors)
but in my opinion the best part of this is the way that people forget that real people are playing aziraphale and crowley. iâve seen people saying that the only reason crowley can walk like that is because heâs a snake so his bones are different. but underneath it all itâs david tennant here to break our hearts again
literally distraught that i have no one to be aziraphale so i can be crowley for halloween. what i supposed to dress up as if not a gay demon who is so stupid?????
stormborns
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
izzy806
germansingergirl
