Ineffably_reef

disaster puppy

[kagakagabisu]

[inayas]

everyday when I wake up

I thank the lord for michael sheen I’m welsh

bingewatched there’s something about movies recently so here’s my little love letter to this show and a wonderful team captain / michael “here’s a random movie fact” sheen 💚

[legendary-lunatic]

The ending was complete shit- but even if you liked it, here’s the facts:

They had 90 minutes. NINETY. MINUTES.

Wasted 2/3rds of it playing the most obvious whodunnit of all time, watching Jesus meander around uselessly, and bringing in some mafia group. And Aziraphale and Crowley, who should be at the center, hardly get to actually communicate, and pretty much never actually talk about their relationship. It was an agregious waste of time.

If they wanted to pull some meta shit, they should have given us a season to do it well. They had the option of doing a full season and chose not to, and the consequence of that is that you don’t get to write all of the convoluted crap you want. 10 minutes before the end of an hour and a half movie that had essentially zero constructive narrative is not the time to be pulling out world upending, genre changing, fandom rending controversial choices out of your ass.

(Especially when a quick google search could have informed anyone that 98% of the fandom agreed beforehand that getting some Human AU when you signed up for immortal shenanigans SUCKS. And on top of that they actually destroyed the entire universe and the main couple.)

The point being- if you are going to just have 90 minutes then you don’t waste that time and then pull twists out of nowhere so you can pretend to be ‘profound’ when neither the fans nor narrative demanded it up until they wrote some impulsive disaster at the very end.

You don’t start yanking on threads for fun, you wrap up the loose ends to make the fans happy and call it a day. 90 wasted minutes of answering none of the questions anyone had, not communicating, being overall rather out of character, and splitting screen time like they had time to give. You lost the chance to write story warping crap when you exchanged 6 hours for and a half.

All they had to do was sit them down at the ritz for dinner and everyone would’ve walked away fine- especially since they didn’t even bother to answer the questions we had beforehand like why the hell Crowley is so goddamned overpowered and what happened in the fall.

It was just generally poorly written. They set the Metatron up as someone who seemed malicious and then killed him ten seconds in. They started the concept of the second coming and then ditched it halfway through to start tearing chunks out of the universe. We sat and watched Jesus dawdle around the entire time to culminate in handing out pizza, and the mafia come out of nowhere to swallow up the first half and then leave. They had Aziraphale show up and get reprimanded for leaving by Mrs.Sandwhich and Crowley, only for them to pretty much passively avoid talking about anything by demanding forgiveness and then brushing off all the emotional baggage they had up until there was no time left to deal with it. All those talks of ‘Us’ and ‘to the World’ in previous seasons, and there’s essentially Zero closure from the characters who have been slow burning since the dawn of creation.

Say all you want about their long life together being fun, and ‘what ifs’, and ‘they find each other in every lifetime’ and blah blah- but sometimes people deserve to have the script actually address things and say them directly to each other and for the audience. It also sure as hell doesn’t help the transition that they had no clue they were gonna be reincarnated so they didn’t even get to toss out an ‘I’ll find you’ or something to soften the blow- they just DIED with zero resolution and we are expected to hinge our hopes and dreams on two strangers with bad haircuts that the audience has zero attachment to in a completely different universe. They didn’t consider how to even make this an effectively impactful ending, emotionally or logistically.

The first half reads like they were trying to obligatorily continue season 2, but the second half is disjointed and feels aimed at picking a new direction 180, and shutting everything down. HARD.

What I personally think the actual truth is, is that they intentionally wrote a way to end the universe (despite the fact that doing so contradicts pretty much every afore established ethical discussion driven by the series regarding the loss of life, replacing people, humans defying destiny, and free will, and is generally all around pretty out of character ), because they didn’t want to be bothered again. If you leave no open end, and a divisive fanbase, they don’t ask you for more. And that’s what I think this disaster really was: the response for having the audacity to ask for an answer to the cliff hanger they left us on in season 2, when all Amazon wants is to stop associating with Neil Gaimon.

I think it’s a hack job, and it’s a slap in the face to fans.

Most will actively hate it for upending all the world building and forcing them to suddenly grieve characters they’ve followed for decades at the last minute with absolutely Zero tact- but those that do enjoy the ending should be upset that it wasn’t written better. The set up could have been better, they didn’t make a choice to find each other, and They didn’t even do a montage of them finding each other in various lifetimes through history, people are just hinging their hopes and dreams on the song ‘time after time.’ And the reasoning behind the whole thing was beyond contrived.

Also, why does starting a new universe without heaven and hell mean they can’t exist as themselves as the sole immortals or just have their memories up until that point- she’s GOD, she can do whatever the fuck she wants and the story uses that to make a ridiculous contingency instead. They also literally had the ability to rewrite life in their hands and didn’t make any use of it. Why not have God just show up if you aren’t gonna do anything with the books? She’s God, she’s been watching, you didn’t need to manifest her, and I don’t know why you would want to.

So yeah, the ending was crap, objectively, simply because it was handled with all the grace and care of a bull in a china shop.

The fact they blatantly disregarded what the obvious emotional outcome of its massive die hard queer fanbase would be is just the cherry on top. The fans are loud and post constant content, it’s not hard to figure out most people just wanted them to wear silly outfits through time, TALK about their feelings, and play ‘a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’ the end. There were six dozen ways they could’ve handled Heaven and Hell and leave the two alone on Earth, and they went with ‘let’s not handle it at all, the only way to solve things is extinction.’ Nobody in their right mind would have wanted them to forget a millennia and over six thousand years of love for each other, that was on no one’s bucket list or radar going into this.

I think it’s fucking intentional, and I think they were sneaky enough about it that instead of being collectively pissed they gave us half written slop we are arguing over whether or not the ending is satisfying- and the answer should be “NO!” either way, because there was about 10% consideration put into it from the second they said they were giving us a pathetic 90 minutes instead of a whole season, and then they wasted the majority of that time doing nothing constructive.

It’s just so disrespectful to the fans, who supposedly this was supposed to be for, and the legacy of this series. And it sucks doubly because I know David Tennant and Michael Sheen really put their all into it- and really, I think they deserved better to work with and a resolution to the characters they brought to life. Love everything they did, but I just can’t be happy with the movie at all.

[chimonantus]

On shades of grey, free will, and hope

Or, my two worthless cents on why this grief is not about the kiss. I am not one for writing posts, usually, but I feel like I need to write down in some way a schematic manner.

(Mandatory "stop reading if you haven't watched GO3" and apologies for any mistakes, English is not my first language and I am kind of all over the place)

First of all, let me say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion - I am extremely happy for those who really enjoyed the finale.

I have read multiple comments saying that if people are not happy with their ultimate sacrifice, then those same people have understood nothing about the story and its message. I see your point of view, and I would like to offer an alternative perspective, as many other people have already brilliantly done.

Shades of grey

We all see some parts of us reflected in Aziraphale and Crowley, this is why so many of us are so attached to this story. We see ourselves in their trauma, in their choices, in their personality. In them being different from humans and from celestial beings alike. They are outcasts, and they represent all those shades of grey of those people who, for one reason or the other, do not conform to the "normal", to the "typical". What is turning them humans doing, if not erasing all of this? There is no one who is different anymore. No more outcasts, in the ideal "real universe".

But also finding shades of grey - finding a compromise between the situation you are in, what you are expected to do, what you think is the right thing to do. But mostly, Aziraphale and Crowley learning over the course of their existence how to find this equilibrium was one of the key messages for me. Especially in a society where living in a 100% ethical way is not possible, sometimes doing your best is all you can do, and it has to suffice. You will feel lonely a lot of the time, and yet, along the way, you might be able to find who shares your struggles and who understands that loneliness. What hurt me the most, here, is that in the end, all the struggle of them working to reach a shade of grey that was a common colour did not matter. There was no resolution. No, a kiss was not needed, but there was no real talking, no hug, no real moment between them. It was being lonely once again.

Free will

What is free will against the circumstances you find yourself in? S1's apocalypse arc, Job, Edinburgh, even Bee/Gabriel, everything now feels emptied of the meaning that was built over the entire narrative arc, and over 6000 years.

The message I took away from the finale is that this does not matter. Whatever you try to do, it's all in the hands of those who are more powerful than you. Be it through propaganda (is it free will if our thoughts are influenced without us even realising?), be it by being able to erase your existence without giving it a second thought (how easy it was to erase people through the Book of Life feels very much like what politicians are doing with minorities, or what is happening in war zones), be it by controlling your access to what you need to survive (Crowley not being able to perform miracles), the message is got from the finale is that whatever I might do, it's useless, because it's anyway in the hands of those who control the game, and I will never be able to make my own choice in this universe.

Hope

One of the main things that Good Omens gave me was hope.

Be it by asking questions and rebelling against the system or by trying to change the system by its own rules, each of us is trying to build a better world. What I got from the finale is that this does not matter in the slightest. Doing your best, looking for a solution, trying to fight for a better world, it does not matter.

I do not want humanity to have a "do-over". I do not want a blank slate or anything like that. I want to believe that this humanity, this world that is so many times reflected in the original GO universe, is worth saving. I want to believe that if we all put ourselves into changing it, into going against gods and those who have all the power, we can still make a change. I want to believe that annihilation and sacrificing our love is not a necessary step to have a chance at making things better - a chance, yes, because we have no proof that the second universe was actually better or that humanity got a better chance at it; after all, the biggest examples of kindness and the biggest atrocities were all human, not a result of the intervention of angels and demons.

They could have shown Jesus and Adam finding each other, and them, as a true expression of humanity, help Aziraphale and Crowley subvert the system. They could have really shown humanity come together and be Aziraphale, Crowley and humanity go against a cruel, careless god to gain their true free will and the right to exist peacefully. They could have shown all the ways we could have found the lady, even when the system is playing against us, making its own rules, and constantly changing them. And we could have still come out as winners.

Good Omens gave me hope of being able to find someone who would make me complete in the way I yearn for. No matter the amount of trauma, of obstacles, of flaws, of fundamental differences. Someone with whom I can make mistakes, and then learn to communicate with and build an even bigger love. Someone with whom I could build my own cottage, someone with whom I could carve a peaceful corner of existence in the painful chaos that is this world. Equally, it does not matter how much you might love someone. If the circumstances are wrong, you might fight and do your best, but what makes you complete will be taken away, even if just for the amusement of someone else.

I believe that them finding each other in each and every universe, "life finding a way", is a wonderful message. But I also want to believe that love wins, for once, even when all seems lost. And I wanted for them to experience that love in their original forms, because we are them, and they are all of us.

What a magnificent love letter to humanity that would have been.

Yes, we were given nightingales. But the cost was erasing the meaning of their song.

A post scriptum

I will take a page from my book, and I will keep "rebelling" against the system, be it the world or, in this case, canon. I will not let them rob me of the love for these two beings who have saved me and so many other people countless times. They are one of the main reasons why I am where I am, and thanks to them I have found a constellation of magnificent people thanks to this story that I am every day grateful for.

I will grieve, but this is just a version of the story that I am not obliged to believe is true. I will reclaim this story, this love, this hope. And I hope each of us who feels pain will take a page from the true meaning of Good Omens and fight to keep their hope and love intact.

[copperplatebeech]

GOS3 Thoughts

Nope. Nope - even if I laughed at moments, and found the ending scene sweet, because how could David and Michael not be? I enjoy an AU as much as anybody, but if anyone deserves their love confession, their kiss, their happy ever after, it’s the canon characters who've been through so much together, not a pair of stand-ins.

I know the line forms to the left. Here we go anyway.

What I got from the original book – and specifically the parts that Pratchett obviously put into it, the underlying theme, the humane perspective – is that the world’s not saved by grand heroics, by the procurement of a McGuffin like the Book of Life or the killing of an Antichrist. It’s saved, little piece by little piece, through the compounding effect of small, good things, of kindnesses performed by imperfect beings and the love of random beauty and the cherishing of the day-to-day. Aziraphale and Crowley thwart the Apocalypse not because they feel the call to be heroes, but because they’ve gotten used to humanity with all its flaws; because they love a bookshop and a car and gravlax and bebop and little restaurants where they know your name. The things that multiply and intertwine in our lives, that hold us and our world together the way roots fix the soil. The shared meals and the do-you-remembers, the problems muddled through, the arguments made up; the love of a child for his home and his friends, for a familiar wood and apples stolen from a neighbor’s tree. How does it save the world if you destroy the world?

(I’m old; I was born in the Fifities, and oh, I remember the  heavy irony of “we had to destroy the village In order to save it.” But that’s just what this story did.)

Saying “this is all broken and wrong, and the only thing to do is wipe it all out and start over from the beginning”: that’s been the recipe for some of the worst horrors of the world. That was the entire fucking message of the original book. The world is flawed, the systems we live under imperfect and even cruel in their origins, but it can be healed, bit by bit, if you love enough – even if you love in seemingly trivial ways.  Good Omens is about mending – mending the consequences of folly, mending friendships, mending the damage people inflict on one another, like an angel mending the spine of a beloved old book. Mending the error in the assumption that sides mean more than individuals, leaving two beings like Aziraphale and Crowley free to treasure all the small things about each other, as friends or lovers or however you choose to see them. The meet-cute of their human counterparts in the remade, blind-watchmaker universe is, well, cute, but it doesn't reward the characters we came to love, who evolved along with humanity, became who they are by outgrowing the artificial opposition imposed on them, and bonded through rising above it. (And neither couple ever gets a tender kiss to cancel out the angry one that left us all ravaged in 2023; more articulate voices than mine have gone to town on the way that narrative choice dilutes the queer representation that stunned us with its promise in the original TV adaptation).

So I see the whole progress of the sequel series as misbegotten – most likely, for all the usual reasons of cupidity and vanity – leaving us with a couple of pieces of tone-deaf fan fiction that literally lost the plot. Good moments here and there, clever bits of banter and comic turns; two lead actors with dazzling chemistry that most of us would pay to hear read the phone book for ninety minutes; but all in all a disjointed story compounded of fan tropes, that did not seem to love its characters or have a point beyond churning them around for ninety minutes.

Where in this story are characters comparable to everybody that made the original so rich and endearing to begin with? The bumbling, sincere romances (Anathema and Newt, Tracy and Shadwell, even the wholesome marital bond of Lesley and Maud)? The tweenage energy and candor provided by  the Them? Eleven-year-old Adam Young faced a choice and protected the world because its simple joys were enough for him; twinky Jesus Mark II goes down an elevator and survives just long enough to learn a card trick, distribute pizza, and be disintegrated without addressing any of the events unfolding around him. And where the entire hell is Agnes Nutter, and her tart wisdom?

(....Remember Agnes? Are we to accept that she wrote two books of prophecy, guiding the angel and demon who were fated to thwart Armageddon – and that her descendant burnt the second, in order to start her new life without a roadmap – only for everything to go up a few years later, not in a ball of flaming goo, but in a corny Avengers Endgame series of sfx dust devils? This story seems to be happening in an entirely different universe to the one that was built between book covers or the opening and closing credits of Season One, and it's not because God rebooted it.)

I'll leave you with a bit of shameless self-promo: an imagining of Agnes’ take on the sequels, and a version of what Aziraphale and Crowley themselves might have thought of the narrative malfeasance, as I view it, of season 2 (both written before any of the uglier reports about NG surfaced). I don't know if this was a case of an author deliberately jerking around his fandom, a case of "too many cooks spoil the broth" when the project had to be retooled for a briefer air time, or just lazy reliance on a wealth of incident and fan service as a substitute for a story worth telling. All I'm sure of is that we, as fan creators, should feel completely free to ignore anything that violates the promise, the message, and the perspective of the story we fell in love with. To mend what went wrong, piece by piece.

[hollow-head]

A missing scene. Thanks for all the fanart and fic throughout the years, you guys

[zevampirex]

I have cry, and never have felt better after. I don’t think I have ever found a movie that feel so much like a blanquet, so sweet and cozy, and so full of love

[mina-logan]

“Good night, moy pomidor.”

“Tomato, right?”

“Yes.”

“Weird. I love you.” - TLG by Rachel Reid

[thence-we-came-forth]

Ilya with his loon tattoo to go with my Shane with his lily!!!!

[aiwa-sensei]

MY Angel!

Patreon  

Instagram  Twitter  Pillowfort  Redbubble

[kreaaterka]

A.Z.FELL AND Co.

my papercraft model of Aziraphale`s bookshop

Here are a few photos of the overall look

If you’re interested, here are links with more information about the model.

Details: link coming soon :) Easter Egg

This is its home on my bookshelf

[henriettarhippo-hrh]

Better The Demon You Know

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! You guys. YOU GUYS. 😭❤️

I am absolutely losing my mind right now!! The insanely talented @gleafer has created the most gorgeous artwork inspired by my fic Better The Demon You Know, and I genuinely cannot stop looking at it!!!

It's from chapter 2 when Crowley and Aziraphale meet for the first time in Hell (mind the tags - it's a darker one!)

It's such beautiful art, I genuinely gasped out loud when I saw it - Aziraphale's face in the last panel 🥺🥺 I'm just a squealing mess of feelings.

Thank you, @gleafer!! ❤️❤️❤️

[roryevansolla]

A little tenderness ❤

[ami-v-dragnire]

🌱Growing Together🌱

.

This is where I am, mentally, all the time. My piece for the @itbeganinagardenzine, a zine dedicated to their retirement at their South Downs cottage. Where nightingales sing.

I love you all ❤️

[fledglingdoodles]

The Fruits of Our Labours Some moments of happily ever after in my comic for @itbeganinagardenzine

[disarmonia]

Crowley🍎

First of all, F Gaiman and everything he's done.

Now that we got this out of the way, here's a portrait of Scottish Crowley of Good Omens on Bentley the horse, painted this a year ago for a charity project "Ineffable Artbook", tried to incorporate the appropriate tartan to pay homage to the wonderful actor.❤️‍🔥 I usually write a little update here when I post new art, I have to say it's hard to put things into words right now, from the looming betrayal of my country by the new American leadership to the russian attack of Chornobyl's protective dome, I'm struggling to keep the hope up, but that's really all we can do. Hope and help as much as possible. There is still a chance for us if Europe finally wakes up.

[starmaker-astral]

What if -