Can i make a request from people commenting on my GO "ideas" posts? I'd prefer if people didn't respond with "this happens in [insert fic where idea im riffing on happens]" when i haven't explicitly asked for fic recs.
I know it comes from a good place, i know ppl think they are spoon feeding me cake, i have done it too trust me i know!!
But it just makes me wanna not engage w the idea anymore. Idk why, i can't explain why it sucks all the creativity out of me. I'd love it if people wanted to play in the sandbox too and add ideas to my posts! I love if you wanna take my post and write your own fic and tag me!
Theres a lot of ways to explore ideas not just one. Just bc a fic has already been written about it doesn't mean i wanna read that fic and overwrite my own ideas and narrative. I'm playing dolls. Come play dolls w me! I already asked your mom and she said yes :)
Two years after Aziraphale stopped Crowley's... caper on the church, he's getting the crew back together for a different heist. Cereal-based silliness ensues.
One thing that really bothered me about the GO finale was that a lot of it felt like they were trying to bring up “oh my god!! They said the thing!! Remember that from before!!??!!1!1!1!?” reactions. It was like fan service without the fan service.
PSA THIS POST IS VERY ANTI-GO S3 so if you don't like don't read please. Please protect yourself. I'm not here to change minds, just to exorcise thoughts.
LEAVE
IF
YOU
LIKED
THE
FINALE
OR
ARE
STILL
REELING
PLEASE
AND
THANK
YOU
AND A CUT FOR GOOD MEASURE
So, on this blog I try to stick to fanworks and discussions of writing. So I wanted to talk a bit about open-ended endings.
Confession - I hate open-ended endings, with very limited exceptions. This is my totally subjective and non-academic opinion, but they just feel lazy to me. I personally feel the storyteller's duty should be to tell the story they want to tell and tell it clearly. Now that does not mean say everything, it does not mean stare at the reader and mouth message at the big moment or big speech. It means give enough evidence on the page or screen so the reader at least understands what happens. How they interpret that is up to them and outside of the author's control, but the what happens should be agreed upon.
Now, in my mind the most obvious exception to this is the ending to Inception. When the credits start to roll, we don't know whether or not Cobb's token falls over. We don't know if the children he runs to are flesh and blood or figments of his imagination. But the entire point of the movie was that debate - does it actually matter? Is a dream more real than reality when the dreamer wishes it to be? It was asked MULTIPLE times, stated out loud and shown through the plot, so in the end it does not matter. Those are his children because he chose them. He was home because he chose to be. The end. The token falling or spinning into eternity has no baring on that ending.
The ending of Good Omens, I would argue, is not open at all. Universe remade, no angels, no demons, no god, no satan, everything left to chance. True free will. And then there's the Asa and Anthony scene, which makes no sense whatsoever if we trust the sacrifice made (which we have to, or the whole thing is even worse). They look the same, find one another again, are instantly attracted to one another and then go to a pub where every cast member of the show was present at that moment. The whole thing is statistically impossible. So in my mind, this was fan service. Angels and demons in human bodies? Jesus, born 2000 years ago, alive in London in present day having beer with Adam? Arthur and Deirdre would have Warlock Young. Adam would not exist.
BUT - INTERLUDE - Elizabeth Berrington can serve me drinks any day she wants.
That whole ending made no sense. Soulmates? Okay, but that clearly destroys the point of the sacrifice. Where is free will if someone is cursed to not feel fulfilled until they find their match? The demon Crowley who sacrificed his existence to free humanity would be devastated if this were the world that grew from that sacrifice.
So, needless to say, this "open-ended" ending fails because it not only does not live up to anything that was set up before, but it blatantly contradicts and negates it. Whether you liked it or not, the fact is it is not open ended in the least. It's confusing. It's contradictory. It is storytelling and fan service at its worst because it leaves the viewers arguing over which part of the end is more important based on their feelings or personal beliefs. And it's caused a rift in our community because of its negligence.
That is it's gravest cruelty.
I know there are many out there struggling deeply because of this ending, and I am so sorry. It feels wrong because it was wrong not only for the characters but for the story and for the way stories are meant to be told. I hope someday we can all move forward from this in whichever way works for us and find joy in the lives we've given them over and over and over again in our fanworks. There is one canon and tens of thousands of happy endings. The sting will fade, the bruise will heal, and they live on, because we will them to.
And what if I never needed their souls to be 'intertwined by fate'? What if all that I needed is for them to love each other because they have known and understood and shaped each other for so long? And what if I never cared about them ‘finding each other in every universe?’ What if all that I wanted is for them, in this universe where the odds were so stacked against them, to choose each other?
I'm listening to David Tennant reading the drunken bookshop scene again (I live here now) and just. ugh. Crowley's druken brain not only immediately defaults to using a fairy tale to convince the bookseller angel that the concept of eternity is in fact, forever - and this is before he ever needed a repertoire of bedtime stories for the nanny gig too - he just. there is this mountain and every thousand years there's this little bird. out of all the cosmic horrors a demon could invoke to describe eternity, he chooses a story about a tiny, fragile creature making a permanent mark on an immovable mountain through stubborn persistence. he's not only an optimist but a romantic as well, i’m
also, I really don't know how to phrase this but to me the finale misses the joke, you know?
it forgets that the christian cosmology was the setting, told through corporate satire, not the villain. even God wasn’t an active tyrant; she was an absent CEO, leaving individual contributors like Aziraphale and Crowley to realize their job descriptions were irrelevant to the company's bottom line anyway, so they coasted by on minimum effort
that corporate satire was what allowed this to be a comedy, a space to tell a beautiful story about choices, humanity, and love.
the finale for some reason treats that background seriously, it turns that setting into an omnipotent, dystopian threat, which completely suffocates both the romance and the humor by replacing a petty system you can outwit, outsmart, outmanouver with a bleak, unearned nightmare where "the company controls your every breath, and you can never clock out"
Crowley and Aziraphale don't need a quiet retirement in the countryside.
What they really need is for their South Downs cottage to be part of an HOA and spend the rest of their existences facing a common enemy of powertripping geriatric citizens and nosy neighbours.
I want 10 seasons of Crowley's plans for a carnivorous garden being turned down and him going scorched earth on the head of the HOA comittees' award winning Dhalia patch. I want 10 seasons of Aziraphale sniffing out HOA policy loopholes like a truffle pig or maliciously complying when he can't get out of something.
The comedic potential of Aziraphale loving Christmas in theory but hating it in reality, which gives him catholic guilt/bad angel feelings, so he triples down on Christmas spirit to compensate. He's decking the halls like no tomorrow, he's partidging that pear tree, ohhh he's jingling those bells alright and cooing over the love in the air and isn't it wonderful Crowley, the spirit of christmas my dear, i may have done a little miracle and made it snow in Tadfield, Crowley. Meanwhile he's holed himself up in the bookshop like its under seige from guerilla christmas shoppers, he can't seem to get a single cup of cocoa that doesn't have peppermint in it, 4 children this week have poked him in the belly and asked him if he's santa clause, and to top it all off Mr. Brown has asked him to play the role of Gabriel in the Whickber street Nativity Play.
Crowley's in the corner watching the angel's eye get progressively twitchier and using up his entire demonic miracle quota to make sure Aziraphale's cup never empties of blindingly acoholic eggnog.
Come on guys we can survive this. We have an incredible book and 12 gorgeous episodes and two characters with insane magnetic chemistry. I've loved them for 7 years SEVEN YEARS and 90 minutes of bad writing are not going to change that. I've loved them for 7 years and this story brought me great joy and comfort and inspiration and i plan to continue loving them and no one will stop me!
They could have at least, you know, asked for God and Satan to bugger off and make the Angels and Demons retire. Heaven and Hell have a liquidation sale and close down. Cue montage of Aziraphale and Crowley somewhat begrudgingly trying to teach the angels and demons how to live on earth and not have a side because well, because they did ask for this after all. Everyone comes over to sit in the bookshop once a week AA style to hold a cup of tea and talk about their struggles while Crowley grumbles and Aziraphale's eyes glaze over. This could have been Jehoshua's purpose this time round, to heal the lingering divide between heavenly host and the legions of hell. Eventually Aziraphale and Crowley think, well this guys probably got it handled, and they buy a little cottage with a garden and make bloody well sure not to give their address out to any of their former coworkers.
Even if it didn't work, they still could have asked.
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.
