In this scene, it doesn't feel like God talking to Aziraphale, it feels like the writers talking to the fans. Fans ask, why give us this beautiful story only to end it definitively with the characters deaths? The author replies, because wasn't it wonderful while it lasted, and experiencing writing it made me smile.
They've already been meta-textual with the characters explicitly mentioning the nightingales (which they wouldn't've been aware of as a metaphor at the end of series one/the book). It isn't a secret that Michael Sheen and Neil Gaiman read fanworks (that's where Gaiman got the idea of canonising the Ineffable Bureaucrasy from) and with the finale being described as a love letter to the fandom, I just can't shake the feeling this was written with what they would say to the fanbase in mind.
As an extension of that, I don't believe human Asa and Anthony where ever part of the plan until they saw the prevalence of human AUs, but that's another thing.
My big issue with people using it being what Terry Pratchett intended as a way to sort of shield the ending is that I'm pretty sure that's just not really how writing or people work.
Human communication always requires some degree of interpretation. Even if someone gives you exact written instructions, you still need to interpret them to do anything with them. The chances of something as complex as the plot of a novel being filtered from one person to another completely unchanged and accurately is very unlikely in any case.
And in this case it seems like the "instructions" weren't even written down, or at least not in detail. Which means that these ideas are completely or mostly reliant on the over a decade old memories of a different person. Realistically speaking, I just can not see that ever being completely reliable. Even if you got most of it down, at least some details are bound to get blurry at that point, simply by virtue of the time passed.
But more importantly, an idea existing does not mean it will be in the finished work. From what I can tell it seems like they never even wrote a first draft of the sequel. Stories often go through multiple drafts and rewrites, as well as a lot of editing in general, before being published. So equating the fact that the idea was tossed around with it being the definitive, ultimately intended outcome is not accurate. It could be, but one just does not guarantee the other.
But even if that idea would have made it to publication, there is another issue here: Adaptation. What they were considering at the time seems to have been a second novel. What we have is a show/screenplay. Those are different things. It is near impossible to adapt one to the other without making changes (and changes were definitely made to Good Omens already).
And since Terry Pratchett is dead and can thus not, in fact, oversee those changes, the result just can not be exactly what he intended.
It could be accurate in broad terms. It could get certain details right. But it simply can not be the same thing.
In any case, at best, this ending is an adaptation of a rough idea for the ending of the first draft of a novel that Terry Pratchett had at some point.
I think it should be acknowledged that Terry Pratchett instructed all his unfinished works to be crushed by a steam roller after his death, and they were. Neil Gaiman has profited off telling people how close he was to Terry and claiming he was doing what he would've wanted. In truth, we don't know if what happened to Good Omens after series one is what Terry would've wanted because he wasn't here to tell us and we the fandom didn't know him personally.
I wasn't planning on engaging with the GO3 finale at all, but wow. I mean, wow.
I don't hate all of it, and I see why people may like it. And I'm happy that people do.
But I did not like it, and I had to bring my thoughts to paper, because the ending left me feeling both betrayed and shocked, while simultaneously seeing the potential ending we could've gotten beneath.
First of all: I never got the impression when watching S1 that humans had no free will or that our choices didn't matter. S1 seemed pretty straightforward with its message being:
No matter what kind of great plan powerful entities may come up with, they'll never be a challenge for humans. Because humans have love, and compassion, and community.
When it came to the end, heaven and hell were sure their plan would work, and Adam would choose Satan. That the apocalypse would begin, and therefore, there would be another war.
But Adam, without any influence from heaven or hell or Aziraphel and Crowley, chose humanity. He chose his friends and his father and his mother. His home. Simply because he was raised with love and understanding.
And yes, there would've been nothing we could've done against the book of life. Michael stole it because they were convinced the great plan, the second coming, had to be through destruction.
But what little we saw of Jesus, I believe, could've been something similar to Adam choosing his father. In message at the very least.
The state of the neighborhood we saw was broken. Shops closed, everyone desperate and more alone than ever. Scared of what was to come, maybe noticing how people seemed to vanish.
And then Jesus would be there and hold our hands, and we wouldn't have to face the end of the world alone.
There wouldn't have been a way for us to stop the end, but we would have had community. Love. We wouldn't have been alone in the streets when our pages burned; we would have had each other.
Instead, the last we felt was fear and sadness because we saw someone else vanish into thin air. We just learned that our mother was sick, and now we were never going to see her again. We could never finish telling Jesus our thanks.
And Jesus died alone, in the middle of the street, without anyone to hold his hand.
Then the end...
Tbh, most of those 90 minutes were fine, imo. Rushed, sure, but that was to be expected.
But those last 15 minutes were just horrible for me.
Because up to that point, when they stood in the bookstore, all the empty books around them, I had been mostly on board with everything happening. And before my eyes, there was an ending that seemed so obvious to me.
Surely, I thought, Aziraphel and Crowley would rewrite the book of life. They would spend however long it would take writing everything into existence again because they were the ones who were around from the beginning.
From the beginning, these two were introduced to us as the one angel and the one demon who loved humanity. Unlike everyone in heaven and hell, they truly cared about us on our tiny little world. Cared enough to stick around for the apocalypse, just so they could hold the antichrist's hand and face of the incarnation of evil.
And this, I thought, would answer Crowley's question.
Why create humanity and then destroy it again? Because God didn't care enough. Maybe they grew bored. Maybe they have other universes to attend to. Maybe they never existed in the first place, and the great plan and everything that came after was just something angels and demons came up with to explain their existence, the way we came up with religion to explain our existence.
And then Crowley and Aziraphel would create our universe again, and there would be no great plan, no end, no destruction. Because this time, we would be created by two beings who loved humanity as much as they loved each other.
They wouldn't even have to scratch the part about giving up their existence - Recreating a universe is a tough job, it should cost a great deal. Choosing to give us, humanity, and everything else another chance should come with a sacrifice. And Crowley and Aziraphel would've chosen to give up their existence to make their writing true, fuel their book of life with their essence, and would've stopped existing.
That way, they would've had to make the same decision - humanity or each other - but they would've had at least a little while with the other one and their happiness. It wouldn't have all gone away with just a simple snap.
But then Satan showed up. And God. And suddenly nothing mattered because the answer to Crowley's question was: Because God played a game of solitaire. Nothing mattered. They didn't matter. Everything they did for 6000 years didn't matter. And now they wouldn't exist anymore.
I'm not the biggest fan when supernatural shows give God a face, because God is supposed to be everything, and showing that in a character is impossible. How do you have a character who both created humans out of love and banished us from paradise? A character that is both kind, but also asks for slaughter to show your dedication.
Having God stay a construct only ever referred to is easier to handle because then you can play with biases. With incoherent depictions.
I liked that in S1 because God narrates, oversees, and knows, but never intervenes. She is kind and loving and interested in what we humans do, but did nothing to stop the apocalypse. And up to the end, it was never confirmed that God actually existed.
But she does exist. We saw her.
And what this ultimately means is that in S1+2, that wasn't our world. It was an alternate world where God existed, and heaven and hell, obviously, so the pain and suffering Crowley and Aziraphel witnessed us going through could be, in a way, traced back to the beginning in the garden created by God. The first sin and all of that.
But here is the thing - What about the world we see at the very end? Is that our world? Because if so, I have some shitty news for Aziraphel and Crowley, because religion still exists. God still exists, just like heaven and hell, and people are getting slaughtered and raped and driven out of their homes in the name of some higher entity. To us humans, it's not a very different world. Only the great plan and threats of divine apocalypses we never even knew about are gone; the rest is very much the same.
I'd like to imagine that a world created by Aziraphel and Crowley would've been a kinder world, because a world created by them would be a world created by humans. Not God (who ultimately created the universe we see at the end, therefore not even that universe is one that exists without God).
Then, regarding Crowley and Aziraphel and the (missing) kiss:
I don't even care that much, tbh. I'm ace, I'm very much aware that people don't have to kiss to be in love or in a relationship, and so are a lot of people.
But I don't think it's truly about a kiss. I think the reasons why people are hurt about this are:
(1) Our climate right now reverts more and more to fascism, purity, and homophobia. And for a show that had always prided itself on being a queer space that tells a queer love story, no matter what kind of love you may see in it, they took a remarkable little stance in the discussion.
They said, sure, let's call it love, and let's show these two men at the end who look like the beloved main characters be married. But don't actually make it too obvious with a kiss, as if we are not aware of the long history of queer baiting and tropes like bury your gays.
I'm all for representation of ace relationships, and showing how people don't need kisses or sex or anything to be a valid couple and taken seriously.
But right now, we're fighting for our existence on both TV as well as our daily lives. So, asking a show that likes to decorate itself with rainbows and wants to be for us queer people for as little as a kiss between two men is not too much, and it doesn't discredit any asexuality of any character.
(2) And, this is a lesser point about this complaint; they set an expectation with S2. We saw them kiss; we know that is something at least Crowley wants. Or he wouldn't have done it.
So why not show it again? Why not have them kiss, since they know it is what so many have hoped for? Why not go all the way and make it undoubtedly a queer story in S3?
Lastly, the very ending of Anthony and Asa:
I'm happy for these two. I'm happy that they met in a bookstore and fell in love.
But I don't care about them. I don't know them. They only wear the faces of the characters I liked, but they are not them.
The reason why Aziraphel's and Crowley's relationship is so interesting to us is everything that has happened between them. 6000 years of slow burn and friendship. That's why I want to see them in love. That's why I root for them.
Not because they look like David Tennant and Michael Sheen, but because they are Crowley and Aziraphel. Because they eat at the Ritz, and raised a kid together, and perform miracles for each other.
It would've been different if they had memories of each other.
If they indicated at all that reincarnation exists in this world, and maybe they are born again and again just to meet and fall in love.
Maybe the way Hadestown chooses to start and end with Orpheus and Eurydice meeting for the first time, and you see the daunting horror and realization on their faces, but with less tragedy and more happiness.
Or if they had chosen an ending where Aziraphel and Crowley get to recreate our universe together, spending as long as they would need with each other, and then Anthony and Asa could have been a direct result of their love. Destined to meet in every lifetime.
✦ I forgot about this drawing cause it didn't turn out how I wanted. But here it is anyway :b The whole thing about people comparing Spinosaurus mirabilis to a unicorn inspired this piece.
✦ Here's a close up (the unicorn is an OC of mine).
Is there anything behind the number 57 in TADC? It's mentioned in both episode 2 by Caine (the AI being 57 times more emersive) and episode 3 by the ghost lady npc (turning a 57 second long story into a Greek tragedy).
I maintain that the best summation of my feminist beliefs are that men and women are not fundamentally different. There are a few quantifiable differences if you average out every woman and every man, but they are not qualitative. And most of them are socially constructed, and would be fixed if we started treating men and women the same. Neither is inherently smarter, neither is inherently kinder, neither is inherently more stoic or stronger or angrier or softer. Everyone is obsessed with the differences between women and men, with finding them and creating them and distancing themselves from the "other half". It's fucked up
While often different in practice, cissexism, transphobia, and homophobia are all rooted in oppositional sexism, which is the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, each possessing a unique and nonoverlapping set of attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires. Oppositional sexists attempt to punish or dismiss those of us who fall outside of gender or sexual norms because our existence threatens the idea that women and men are “opposite” sexes.
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