My name is Maria, and currently I am venting about how much I disliked the ending of Good Omens and there's no timeline as to when I'll be done. (I'll miss you, Aziraphale. You deserved better!) Click here if you're interested to see a time where I was hopeful about the show.
Here's other stuff that you can expect from me on a regular basis:
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Gilmore Girls
The Good Place
Pokémon
Otherwise, it's a mixed bag of reblogs of whatever has my attention at the time. I hope you enjoy your stay!
Thinking about the big reveal in Spider-Man Brand New Day
Spoilers under cut (and in tags)
I just watched Spider-Man Brand New Day yesterday and I wanna talk about the v-max reveal because the more I think about it the more it breaks my heart :((
Jean spends the whole movie searching high and low for v-max, trying to figure out what it is. Peter spends the whole movie trying to stop her from finding it, assuming it’s dangerous. WE spend the whole movie believing v-max is some big crazy thing, so dangerous it’s not in any of the DODC files. by the end of the movie Jeans getting experimented on—tortured, really. she looks up in pain and sees v-max. On a vent. VentMax. A fucking vent brand. V-max isn’t some big crazy dangerous thing, it’s Sara, reaching out to her sister, trying to find solace and safety in her sister’s mind. It’s Sara, sharing the very last thing she sees. It’s Sara, trying to be with her sister in her final moments of life.
I rarely cry at TV shows and movies. The most is I'll get misty eyes.
I fucking cried watching Spider-Man Brand New Day.
Also, you're telling me it could've looked that good this whole time?!?! Love this new director. May his lobster be perfectly buttered until the next Spiderman movie comes out.
aziraphale is so brave i don’t even caaaaaaare. he is anxious every single second of s1 and yet he’s still stubbornly voicing his opinion to the archangels and to the metatron. he risks violence! he suffers violence!! sandalphon fucking socks him in the gut, we all saw that shit. but he wants to keep crowley and the world safe so he fights anyways. BRAVE. i don’t care what he or anyone else thinks.
i still don't think I've fully processed the implications of the Crowley-as-an-angel scene and how it shows that he's been trying to prevent armageddon since before time even began. he heard that 6000-year universal age limit and immediately knew what it meant. it was the first thing he did "wrong", the cause of his first and oldest and deepest wound, it's "you can't kill kids", it's his deeply held belief that it's not acceptable to create just to destroy. he tries to stop it before it even begins and he Falls, he tries again after the first 6000 years & temporarily succeeds. he says let's run away but he hasn't yet, and it's hard to imagine he actually will.
On the matter of tags: an earnest attempt to communicate
As a random member of the Good Omens fandom community, I’d just like to toss my hat into the ring and attempt to clear up some misunderstandings. I also want to encourage some honest, good-faith dialogue in a severely fractured fandom.
This is not an attempt to convince anyone to interpret the finale a specific way. This is a practical conversation about how we discuss the finale in fan spaces.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will be focusing on tags as they are used on social media platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram. AO3 tagging is considerable more complex and warrants a whole convo in its own right, so I won't focus on that here.
THIS POST INCLUDES DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE.
So, tags. Tags have become a thorny issue in the Good Omens fandom. I suspect this issue is so pertinent now, two months after the finale aired, because most of us have dropped “GO3 spoilers” tags, which people would have been filtering out if they did not wish to see anything from the finale. The finale is no longer a fresh commodity, so we are all trying to determine for ourselves what the next phase of our engagement with fandom will look like.
In fandom spaces, tags are a courtesy. No one can force anyone to use tags, of course. But tagging is a long-running standard of fandom etiquette across multiple online platforms. Tags are tools that help us find or filter out specific content. But what happens when we disagree on what tags should even be used in the first place? When tags themselves are a battleground?
I have seen assumptions that finale dislikers are demanding that all content with Asa Fell and Professor Anthony Crowley be tagged with “suicide.” It's possible that I’ve missed some significant conversations, but as someone on the disliker side, I have not seen anyone demand that Asanthony shippers use a "suicide" tag on all their posts featuring Asanthony. If anyone has asked that, I agree that it would be unreasonable! But I strongly suspect this perception comes from a game of fandom telephone in which different conversations are being conflated.
What IS being asked:
All content featuring Asa and Anthony should be tagged with their names or their ship name, Asanthony.
The "ineffable husbands" ship name should not be used for Asanthony.
Content warnings are strongly encouraged when sharing visuals of the scene where God grants Crowley and Aziraphale’s request to be removed from existence, specifically the moments as they disintegrate, as this decision is interpreted by many fans as a suicide.
Let’s address that first point now.
Tagging Asanthony as "Asanthony" makes sense. I think most people are already doing this. If you’re not doing this, well… I strongly advise you to reconsider. Tags aren’t just for those filtering out content, but for those seeking it. Someone who doesn’t want to see Asanthony can use this tool to avoid them, and someone who is specifically seeking out Asanthony content can use the tag to find them and share some appreciation.
Where we have some disagreement is the second point listed above: whether Asanthony deserve to be tagged with the general “ineffable husbands” ship name as well. I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on this one. Some people do see them as the same ship, and others do not. Personally I’m someone who does not see Asanthony as "ineffable," but I am okay to concede on someone using the general ship tag for them, as it really does boil down to one's own interpretation. In my view, so long as "Asanthony" is also used, tag them as you see fit.
Now for the third point. This is where I'll be talking about suicide.
Suicide is obviously an incredibly sensitive and distressing subject, one that is highly likely to carry a personal resonance for many fans on all sides of the GO3 debate. I understand why people are upset to have to bring this subject up in their tags when they do not see the final scene that way.
But if you do find it upsetting to even consider using that tag... that means you agree that this topic is distressing, yes? The ineffables' decision was genuinely genuinely distressing for people who interpreted their choice as a suicide. I am pleading with you to understand this: there are members of our community who struggle with suicide ideation, and that scene genuinely triggered some of these people.
You don’t like to see this tag imposed. Well, others don’t like to suddenly come across visuals that in their view shows a suicide. Not seeing Crowley and Aziraphale's decision as a suicide is just as much an interpretation as seeing it as a suicide is.
We will never agree on our interpretations of Crowley and Aziraphale's final request to God and how it played out. The fact remains that the scene where they make this choice and it is granted is triggering to a significant portion of the fandom. This is not a niche opinion.
We won't be able to reconcile our views on this. But we do have to share fandom spaces together. Blocking others who have a different approach to discussing this scene is always an option. But maybe we can also attempt to reach a middle ground in the form of a tag.
I have chatted with others about this, and an idea I have seen discussed is for the fandom to come up with a neutral term for the scene where God grants Crowley and Aziraphale's request, akin to how we settled on “the Final Fifteen” for the last fifteen minutes of season 2. This term should not favour one interpretation over another.
Some suggestions:
The Final Half Hour (or… the Final Twenty? How long is this scene? Anyone clocked it?)
The Decision
We’ve Come to a Decision (WCTOAD? Well, I do like toads)
Please chime in if you have other suggestions!
Like I said at the top, no one can force anyone to use tags. This is ultimately down to one's own discretion.
But I think it's fair to say that our fandom is currently in crisis. The community has fractured — or perhaps it is simply going through some very nasty growing pains. Maybe we can grow with it.
We will never be in a place where we all agree on GO3’s choices. Right now, we are all figuring out how we want to navigate this story and fandom we have all come to love. However we feel about the finale, we are all trying to find new ways forward.
We can argue about who’s right. We can block as we see fit. We can tag or not tag according to our own interpretation to make a point.
We can also decide to make productive choices that will help us all navigate our fandom spaces moving forward. Above all else, we can choose to be kind.
If you've read this far, thank you for hearing me out.
I'm interested in seeing the numbers between the Good Omens seasons. I remember the day it came out, the finale made it into the top 10 that same day, then a few days later it was gone. Season 2 was there for at least a week, maybe more, but the season finale barely made it a few days before disappearing.
It has come to my attention that the character and pairings tags on AO3 have consolidated Aziraphale with New Universe Asa, Crowley with New Universe Anthony, and A/C with Anthony/Asa. I have put in a request to AO3 to have these tags separated out. But currently, if you search for A/C pairings, you will get fics that are new universe Anthony/Asa even if they are not tagged with A/C.
However, there is a way to fix this in your own searches.
When you search for fics with Aziraphale, and/or Crowley, and/or Aziraphale/Crowley, you can filter out anything tagged Asa and/or Anthony and/or "Fellony." You can, of course, do this yourself by simply setting the search parameters as such (e.g. if you wanted all Aziraphale fics and no Asa fics), but I thought it might help to provide you with an easy link for the pairing search.
This is a search for Aziraphale/Crowley fics that excludes fics that are tagged Anthony/Asa (either solely or additionally).
