Listen, we all laugh at how much mileage Aziraphale is gonna get out of his kinky ‘captive princess’ fantasies once he and Crowley get it together, and we are completely right and correct to do so. But we’ve all been sleeping on the other half of that equation. Because Aziraphale’s the one who’s been setting up these, “Oh no, I am dramatically imperiled (and/or mildly inconvenienced); where oh where is the dashing and devilishly handsome knight who will save me?” scenarios for centuries - but Crowley’s the one who’s been turning up unfailingly, again and again and again.
Because Crowley? Crowley wants to be the hero. Crowley wants to be James Bond. He wants it so badly it hurts, bullet-hole windscreen transfers and all. Crowley’s deep, dark fantasy is that he can be good - but also a little bit bad. The rogue agent, the wild card, the one who doesn’t follow the rules, and doesn’t much truck with listening to his superiors. Crowley’s deep, dark fantasy is one in which he gets it right; in which he does the right thing at the right time, and has the right witty comeback in the right situation, and instead of being punished, he saves the day and wins the heart of the genderless celestial being of his choice. Crowley’s deep, dark fantasy is one in which he is never not in control of his situation; one in which he bounces back easily and stylishly from all manner of fights and challenges and adversity; where he faces nothing he cannot overcome with the right combination of wit, ballsiness, and a little Hollywood luck. Crowley’s deep, dark fantasy, the one he can never, ever admit out loud, is one where the world is simple and uncomplicated in the way nothing in real life is simple and uncomplicated; a world in which the good end happily, the bad unhappily, the baddies are dispatched in PG-13 fashion, and none of it needs to be questioned or second-guessed at all.
Crowley’s deep, dark fantasy is one in which there is nothing so dastardly, nothing so terrible or fearsome, that it cannot be solved by a guy in a flash suit arriving in the nick of time with a fancy car, and a complicated watch, and a pen that can write underwater.
Michael crying in the behind the scenes of Good Omens 3.
"We've gone through all kinds of experiences doing it, and just such a pleasure. And to go through it with David has been... it's just been wonderful".
Professor Anthony, astrophysicist and author extraordinaire, got everything he ever wanted in life.
What about the demon Crowley?
Just this once, Crowley promised himself, reaching out with one hand and pushing it through the cool, thin film of reality. Just one little teensy time, and then he would be done. He’d promised he wouldn’t, but just once. Once couldn’t hurt.
Read on AO3
Special thanks to @quitequaintrelle for the beta!
(a/n below the cut)
This is a post-season 3 fic, not a fix-it or rewrite. This is the way I cope with upsetting endings: by riffing on what's already there.
At first I thought this was going to be a one-shot. And then I wrote another chapter. I have another 5-6 chapters planned out. I don't know where it goes after that, or how it ends... not yet, anyway.
But there will be more, and I’m grateful for anyone who wants to join me on this journey <3
Some thoughts. I was going to wait until they were more in order but nope, just going to splat them on here. Hereafter follow spoilers, spoilers galore, here there be dragons, etc etc, though I'm going to babble about myself first (it'll be relevant) (at least to my mind it is) so no harm done if you look at the first few paragraphs. Still, Good Omens spoilers, here some be. Though honestly a lot more personal stuff than spoilers.
Right. Here we go.
I did a Master's degree in English Literature. The title of my dissertation was Free Will and the Transference of Power, and it was about the tendency in fantasy novels for, at the end of all things, 'magic' in whatever form (actual magic, elves, dragons, gods, Old Ones, etc) to leave the world and for the responsibility of taking care of the world to pass into the hands of humankind. Among a lot of other things I mused on whether this was 'good' or 'bad' or 'necessary'. On the whole I'm very, very, very pro free will and enjoyed writing it all a lot, aside from the stress of "oh shit I have to get this gigantic thing finished or I'll FAIL MY DEGREE AAAAHHH". It's all still stuff I love discussing. (for those who will inevitably ask I used Tolkien, LeGuin, and Susan Cooper as my primary examples of the trope, though I kick myself for not having included Lloyd Alexander and Phillip Pullman and a good many others, but that's a book for another lifetime where I became the academic I really thought I'd become).
When asked about my religious beliefs, the answer is "vaugely Deist," AKA the Clockwork God theory, that some sort of Creator once upon a time set everything in motion and then stepped back to let it run without further interference. I didn't have the terminology for it as a kid but that's been my belief pretty much since I was ten (when I first realized my family was Episcopalean on one side, Jewish on the other, my parents had each abandoned these to become Zen Buddhists {in one case later fervent atheist, the other is now a roshi at her temple}, I went to Presbyterian schools because all the other schools in the area were dreadful, and that while I sort of felt that on the whole there was more likely an overall creative force than not the idea of choosing a particular religious path as True or Fact, just didn't work for me, to say nothing of the idea of an interventionist God, but that is all yet another story albeit one for this lifetime).
Given all that, you'd think I'd be okay with the ending of season three. And in some ways I am. Intellectually I am. It was very Terry Pratchett (himself very much an atheist), had a lot of echoes of the end of Small Gods. And given how much of a struggle it was to wrest the story away from [not named] and back into the hands of Terry's estate, that feels appropriate.
But.
When you get right down to it...in the end, everyone died. Not just died, but ceased to exist. Everyone. Including the angel and demon I've been so invested in for years, whose happy ending I have wanted so, so, so badly. And not just them but their whole world, the one that's been my sandbox during Huge Life Changes, the pandemic, becoming extremely disabled, having to give up my vocation, a host of other things.
So yeah. Mixed feelings, to say the least.
Do I like that in the end Crowley, constantly true to himself, chose to let humans have the power to choose and do things and live without the constant threat of Someday God Will Just End Everything Arbitrarily looming over them? That feels right, yes. Do I like that Aziraphale in the end left the choice to Crowley? Also yes. Am I happy that essentially all fanfic is now canon? Sure. Was it cute to watch a human au of Crowley and Aziraphale become smitten? Always is, that's why I read so much of it. Is there stuff to work with and think about? Absolutely.
But I needed *their* happy ending too. The demon who once Fell from Heaven and is still angry about it and wanting to know why, the angel who loved humanity's foods and music and literature so much he surrounded himself with them constantly, both of the outsiders who found each other against all odds. And instead they and their entire world are just...undone. Replaced by a new version that looks like them and no doubt have their own stories to tell that are worth hearing. But I needed *their* ending, and I really, really wanted it to be something other than self-sacrifice for the sake of humanity.
I suppose, given that Good Omens has always been a story about what it means to be human, I wanted to be about the humans choosing to make their own choices. I wanted the things the humans do to have meaning. So, Adam, again. Jesus/Yeshua/Josh couldn't have been exactly the same (though what would I give for th original six episodes which included Jesus and Adam meeting up and running around), we needed higher stakes, but...that much does feel wrong. Which is part of the point Crowley was making, that the human's choices *didn't* matter God's rigged game, I know.
So again, it's appropriate that I'm frustrated. Life is frustrating. Existence is frustrating. It's all questions without answers but at least in their story now no one is mucking them about (except from a meta standpoint because the writers were and we will and actually it's ALL MUCKING ABOUT ALWAYS). I don't doubt Terry would approve of things not being all neat and tidy at the end. He was never one to shy away from a mess.
But I didn't just want appropriate. I wanted to see them happy. Aziraphale and Crowley, happy and together. I'm grieving right now because I just watched my comfort couple and all their world, all the little details we as a fandom have taken so much joy in celebrating, get erased. And even if it's rebuilt a thousand times and a thousand times more, infinite Anthonys and Asa/Ezra/Alistair/InsertNameHeres, that hurts. It really, really hurts.
I don't blame anyone for having a different reaction; anyone who's happy with the ending absolutely should enjoy it. I think I'm still glad to have watched it, there was a whole lot to inspire and delight me too, especially in the first half (where several things I predicted happened and one thing I'd feared didn't, so that's nice). I am glad for all the cast and crew who put their heart into it and saved it from not having any ending at all. I still wish we could've had the full six episodes even if it'd had the same ending.
But I'm going to be grieving for a while.
It's 3 a.m. and another night of horrible sleep (thank you Prime) and maybe everyone is too worn out to care, but......
I cannot accept that the world was so broken it needed to be eliminated.
I do not believe that, when Aziraphale heartbrokenly expressed that all he wanted was Crowley, that Crowley wouldn't suggest they stay in that Garden for as long as they can -- just to give that last gift to his Angel -- before resuming this cruelly unnecessary path with God.
I reject the concept that after 6000 years of studying Aziraphale's every thought and action, S3 Crowley no longer has ANY CLUE as to who his Angel is, what he wants, how hard he's tried, and especially how much he loves and needs some peace with the person who completes him.
I find it ridiculous that, when Crowley said what he wanted, he somehow did NOT see the faint hope in Aziraphale's eyes fade and be replaced with numb despair. That he said, "DID I SAY THE WRONG THING?" with no attempt to convey how much he valued his Angel.
I think it's bizarre and insanely OOC that Aziraphale would say, "Otherwise I wouldn't need to find him, would I? AND I WOULDN'T NEED YOU." Our Angel was torn apart leaving him in the Final 15, and torn apart in losing him to God's rigidly uncaring games.
I will not accept that Crowley was so defined by his traumatic history that he accepted all this, and them disappearing into the ether, without even a delay or a struggle or a massive brainstorming session about all those damned empty pages that become a NEW BOOK OF LIFE.
I refuse to justify this ending with the idea that Crowley's life was so defined by his pain that ending his existance - AS HIMSELF - was some romantically tragic destiny.
*****
I'm trying so hard to be "Nice", and "Accurate", and reasoned, and helpful. But this was some crappy OOC despairing nihilistic Giving-Up, by the former demon whose whole arc in S1 was that he learned to NOT GIVE UP. Where was the fight that comes before the noble sacrifice?
Their story, the part of the story that was ACTUALLY THEM, ended in that diminished bookshop. It was to end as it began -- in a Garden.
